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WORLD PICTURES 



WESTMINSTER, ENGLAND 



WORLD PICTURES i^ v- 
BEING A RECORD IN 
COLOUR BY MORTI- 
MER MENPES • TEXT BY 
DOROTHY MENPES • 
PUBLISHED BY ADAM ^ 
CHARLES BLACK SOHO 
SQUARE • LONDON • W. 



rr -n 



R. H. RUSSELL 
NEW YORK- 1902 



COPYRIGHT, 1902, By 
ROBERT HOWARD RUSSELL 



Entered at Stationers' Hall, London, England 



Printed in the United States in July, 1902 






THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Coptta BfccsivED 

NOV. ? 1902 

CLA88*^»XXo No, 
COPY 8. 



UNIVERSITY PRESS • JOHN WILSON 
AND SON • CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. 



CONTENTS 

Page 

England 3 

Holland 25 

France 41 

Normandy 57 

Brittany 65 

Switzerland 77 

Italy 93 

Sicily 113 

Spain 119 

Morocco 133 

Turkey 143 

Greece 153 

Palestine 165 

Egypt . . . . ' 183 

South Africa 199 

IifjDiA 207 

Cashmere 233 

Burma 245 

China 261 

Japan 283 

Mexico 309 

V 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

1 . Westminster Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

2. Trafalgar Square 2^ 

3. A Surrey Porch 8 

4. A Cottage in Surrey 14 

5. Welsh Woman 20 

6. Rotterdam 24 

7. At Volendam 26' 

8. Type of Dutch Residence 28'" 

9. Edam 30^' 

10. A Provincial Interior 32^ 

11. A Dutch Fisherman 34 

12. The Seine at Paris 40 

1 3 . On the Seine 46 

14. A Kiosque, Paris 52 

15. An Old-Fashioned Hearth 56 

16. Rouen 58 

17. Cathedral at Lillebonne ; . . . 60 

18. Vegetable Market 64 

19. Breton Peasant 66 

20. A Breton Woman 68 

21. Pig Market 72 

22. Goschenen 76 

23. Chalet near Lucerne 78 

vii 



List of Illustrations 

FACING PAGE 

24. Goschenen 80 ^^ 

25. Interlaken 82^ 

26. Interlaken 84V 

27. A Mountain Torrent 86 

28. Lake of Lucerne 88"' 

29. Neighbourhood of Chamounix 90^ 

30. A Doorway, Venice 92*/ 

3 1 . Street in Venice 94 

32. A Garden, Rome 98^ 



33. Inside St. Mark's, Venice 100 



34. A Street in Naples 

35. Naples and the Bay 

36. Capri 

37. Remains of Ancient Rome 

38. Deserted Houses 

39. Palermo 

40. On the Outskirts of Palermo . 

41. A Courtyard, Seville 

42. Courtyard in Seville 

43. Seville 

44. Tangier 

45. Street Scene in Tangier .... 

46. A Courtyard 

47. Mosque of St. Sophia, Constantinople 

48. Scutari 

49. Tower of the Winds, Athens . . 

50. A Garden, Athens 

51. Courtyard in Damascus .... 

52. The House of Ananias, Damascus . 



02V 

04v/ 

06'^ 

08^ 

12^ 

14V/ 

16^ 

18 

22 

28^/ 

32\/ 

36^ 
38V 

42V 
46 V 

52. 

64 

66 



Vlll 



List of Illustrations 



FACING PAGE 



53. On the Road to Bethlehem 170 

54. Jerusalem 172^' 

55. Mosque of Omar, Jerusalem ^7^^' 

56. Mount of Olives 176*'' 

57. Bethlehem 178*^ 

58. Cairo 182^ 

59. The Pyramids 186'^ 

60. Fruit Stall 190 >^' 

61. A Cairo Street ^94 

62. Near Kimberley 198*^ 

63. Bloemfontein 202 >^ 

64. A Seed Stall, Delhi 206 

65. Bazaar at Delhi 208 

66. The Porcelain Dome, Amritsar 210 

67. The Taj at Agra 212' 

68. The Golden Temple 214^' 

69. Moslem Women 216 

70. Jeypore 218"^ 

71. Town of Amritsar 220" 

72. Nautch Girls 224*"'' 

7 3 . Delhi 228 

74. Srinagar 232 

75. Family of Nomadic Tribe "... 234^ 

76. Sapoor 236*^ 

77. River Dwelling at Srinagar 238 

78. A Singing Girl 240 

79. " On the Road to Mandalay " 244 

80. Watching a Boat-Race 248 

81. An Up Country Village 252*^ 

ix 



List of Illustrations 

FACING PAGE 

82. At Mandalay 256/ 

83. In the City of Shanghai 260^-^ 

84. A Tea House, Shanghai 264 > 

85. Canton 266 

86. Nursery Garden 270'^ 

87. On the Yellow River 272^ 

88. A River Scene 276'' 

89. Chinese Cook 278*^ 

90. At Kioto 282'^ 

91. An Iris Garden 284^ 

92. Entrance to a Temple 288 

93. Geisha Girls 292 

94. Children Watching a Play 296 

95. A Tea House 298 

96. The Ogara River at Tokio 302 

97. Mexico City 308 

98. Tehuantepec 316 

99. A Mexican Village 324 

100. Puebla 330 



ENGLAND 













TRAFALGAR SQUARE, LONDON 



ENGLAND 

There is perhaps no scene in all England so thor- 
oughly typical of English life, English sports, and 
English people, as that of Henley Regatta. The 
river laughs in the sunshine, sloping green lawns touch 
the water, bulrushes make sweet music in the wind, 
and the whole brilliant pageantry of London life is 
floating idly down the stream, men and women of the 
fashionable world recline on silken cushions, dressed 
in the smartest of boating flannels and the daintiest of 
summer costumes. The picture is so typically Eng- 
lish that a gaily painted, picturesque gondola, with its 
attendant white-robed gondoliers, seems rather out of 
place, although it adds somewhat to the confusion and 
wealth of colour. Gorgeous house-boats, each strug- 
gling to outdo the rest in beauty and originality, line 
the river side. One is painted salmon colour and 
smothered with salmon-hued flowers, and even the little 
boats attached and the gowns of the ladies are arranged 
to harmonise with the scheme of colour. Later on in 

3 



World Pictures 

the season the same salmon-coloured party will be there 
still, not quite so gay, perhaps, but clinging desper- 
ately to the river, for one does not pay rates and taxes 
or ground rent in a Thames house-boat. Almost 
every day during Regatta week the stream is packed 
from bank to bank with boats of all descriptions. 




— canoes, punts, row-boats, dinghies, — each carry- 
ing its charming cargo of lovely laughing women 
shaded by flower-like silk parasols, and propelled by 
heated perspiring men, for even the mildest tempered 
of individuals might lose his temper in negotiating 
crowded locks. All this appeals to one at the first 
glance because of its swing and sparkle. 

I love the gay river life and the magnificent scenery, 
the grand grey ruins, the poplars, the mossy banks, 
the flowers and the fields, — all that goes to make up 
the Thames of Henley, Windsor, Oxford, Richmond, 

4 



England 






'i0MiW^;0^m4^My^^^^^^ 






and Teddington. But what of the Thames of Chelsea, 
Battersea, and Westminster, where the green and am- 
ber river is changed to a river of steel grey, ghost-like 
and mist-shrouded, where barges, steamers, warehouses, 
gas-cylinders, railway bridges, and factory chimneys 
replace flower-decked house-boats and brilliant mid- 
summer pageants ? What would a foreigner think of 
this London Thames in comparison with the glisten- 
ing Seine or mystic Nile, or even one of our own 
countrymen accustomed to the green-banked Med- 



way 



? He would turn 



his back on it promptly 
as a dirty, gloomy, fog- 
bound place unworthy 
of consideration. And 
so would we, no doubt, 
had not the great mas- 
ter Whistler taught us 
to love this grey river 
of ours, to discover un- 
told joys in its black 
barges, Dutch boats, 
its tangle of rigging, 
masts, funnels, and 
cordage, and, above all 







X-5^^ 



J._ .-^- 



World Pictures 



in the grey mist, enshrouding both the river and the 
city on its banks as with a filmy curtain of silver 
gauze. It is this haze, dreamy and poetic, that 
in reality forms half the beauty of the Thames, and 
through it one can catch Turneresque effects. For 
instance, you will see a phantom bridge in the far 
distance with all the lower part swept away in dense 
mist, and just a broad band of purple showing as 
though the bridge were suspended in mid-air. It was 
Whistler, also, who first discovered that there could 
be beauty in a warehouse ; now, when I am told 
my house resembles a warehouse, I am exceedingly 
flattered. 

The Thames at night is of the darkest inky blue ; 
a thousand black shapes and ghastly piles loom for- 
midably in the distance, and the dark water is all 
a-glitter with in- 
numerable spar- f >^- [ 
kling lights. No- 
where in England 
could you find 
better material for 
pictures than in 
Chelsea, more es- 



liiMiiiiiiT f .1 



'^ C^O 



T ^ "I'll -f, 3 f II aiFi ni-i.,iiiW,a^A«cw' I "p^s^s) «i -. m «"ii /^rrs-'"'''ii' ■■ I , 



England 

pecially Chelsea as it appeared four or five years 
ago ; but it was then practically owned by James 
McNeil Whistler. There were his little shops, his 
rag shops, his green-grocer shops, and his sweat 
shops ; in fact, so nearly was it all his, that after a 




time he sternly forbade other painters to work there 
at all. I remember an artist telling me that he was 
once in the middle of making a little sketch down 
a side street in Chelsea, fondly believing that he had 
securely hidden himself, when suddenly the master ap- 
peared as though from out of the earth, pounced upon 
the miserable man, and demanded how he dared to 
paint in his Chelsea. The artist hastily packed up his 
paraphernalia and slunk off, thoroughly ashamed of 

7 



World Pictures 




himself, feeling that he had really been acting as a 
mean poacher on the preserves of another. 

There are few places more closely linked with the 
lives of great men than Chelsea. Thomas Carlyle, 
Steele, Addison, and even the great painter Turner, all 
lived in Chelsea. Dante Rossetti, one of the greatest 
pioneers of modern times, whom Burne-Jones and 
the Pre-Raphaelites look up to as to a master, lived 
all his life in Chelsea. At the' time -when Oreihorne,, 
that fashionable meeting-place for artists, was in exist- 
ence, he and Whistler and Swinburne used to spend 
their evenings there, enjoying from the grounds the 
magnificent night effects on the Thames. It was just 
about this period that Whistler was painting his 
Thames masterpieces, and among them a picture of 
the fireworks seen from Cremorne, which Ruskin 
roundly slated, declaring it to be " a pot of paint 

8 



A SURREY PORCH, ENGLAND. 



England 

flung in the eyes of the British public." One night 
Rossetti, who had a perfect mania for animals and 
stocked his garden with beasts of all kinds, when walk- 
ing home with Whistler, saw a calf, which he im- 
mediately bought and led back to his house. Whistler 
gingerly following. The next day Whistler called on 
Rossetti and during the morning went out into the 
garden to make a sketch. As lunch time came round 
and Whistler did not return, Rossetti went out himself 
to search for him. He found him up a tree with the 
calf at the base, daring him to descend, while Whistler 
feebly gesticulated with his cane. 

What is it that makes the mystic charm, the irresist- 
ible fascination of London ^ Dull, solid, fog-bound as 
it is, with long unlovely streets, why is one so attached 







/^ 



:r 









World Pictures 




to this smoky city ? Why is it that one's thoughts 
centre round London always, even when away in 
sunny Capri? One thinks always of what one will do 
when back again in London, of what people are doing 
at that moment in London ; one's mind almost uncon- 
sciously harks back and hankers after London. Is it 
because it is the centre of the universe, or is it, again, 
because of its glorious historic associations, because it is 




Millie 



IMmSX- 



England 



the largest city in the world, or because of its ancient 
stones? One's affection springs partially from every 
one of these reasons, but chiefly because of the intense 
interest of the great human drama in London, and 
also because of its really great beauty. One invariably 
feels a real joy in returning to London, whether from 
Japan, from Australia, from the wild woods, from the 
^iB tropics, or from countries teeming with 




sun and colour. Yet the sensation, though delightful, 
is nearly always different. There is the arriving at New- 
haven on a summer morning when the white cliffs rise 
glistening from the sea, then the landing, the getting into 
the train, and the hurrying through the lovely English 
country with the downs on either side, seeing the peo- 
ple going to their work, and the old grey churches nest- 
ling amongst the green trees. I don't think, you can 
get a more typical glimpse of England than you can 
in this way. The whole run from Sussex up to Lon- 
don is an example of the beauty of the English land- 



World Pictures 

scape, which has so often been sneered at by those \^ho 
go abroad in search of what they consider to be greater 
beauties. 

The drawing near to London is an experience of 
itself. There is no grandeur in the approach, there 
very rarely is in the approach to any great city, but as the 



-■?/:! 



f.^iqf/i 



""^n, 






v;. 




train flashes by what Arthur Morrison calls " the low 
mean streets," their fluttering garments and dirty back 
yards, you are proud and surprised at the vastness of the 
city, which seems to extend for ever. You read your 
paper and try to forget the time, but on looking up 
again there are the same suburban houses, the same 
long vista of tiled roofs. You go over a bridge and 
feel that at last you have reached the terminus. But 
no, you must cross the Thames half a dozen times 



England 




more before London is reached. When you actually 
do draw near to Victoria Station you get a superb 
view of the historic river, and catch a glimpse of a 
brilliant city which makes you realise that London is, 
as the artists call it, the most beautiful place in the 
world. 

You will be full of admiration as you are driving 
through the streets and through some of the squares 
past splendid Hyde Park, and down Piccadilly, which 
if you really regard it in the 
sense in which it should be 
regarded, you will consider 
one of the most lovely streets 
in the world, with its fine 
irregular buildings on one 
side, and the Green Park on 
the other. The foreigner I 
am afraid would be at once 
struck with the extreme ugli- (^t^^i - 
ness or our wall-posters, es- ' --^.^-j 
pecially in comparison with " -' 

13 




-^-.H 



World Pictures 

those of Paris. They are better than they were, I 
am thankful to say, but much more might be done 
towards beautifying London in this direction. Also 
London would be far finer if it were cleaner ; all 
those fine old buildings that have their exquisite 
architecture hidden beneath a thick layer of dirt and 
grime should be brought to light. What a pity the 
whole town cannot be distempered over in some way, 
c-:n for this would both preserve the build- 
p^, ings and add greatly to their 




beauty. London by rights should be placed in the 
hands of the poet and of the artist. Imagine rose- 
red, brilliant white, and palest green houses, seen 
through a silver-grey mist. The city would un- 
doubtedly be the joy of the whole earth. 

Nothing could possibly be more beautiful than 
London at night when the Criterion and many other 
fine buildings are lit up with myriads of lights. Then 
consider that magnificent sweep into Regent Street ; 

14 



A COTTAGE IN SURREY 



England 



— ^HA-^ 










jsM^^^ 



^Zl- 



it is fine enough for any picture. The Strand is in- 
tensely interesting from the historic standpoint, though 
not of course from the picturesque. Again, there is 
Bond Street, Hterally the centre of the world, the prin- 
cipal street in England. There is no outward show, 
but one cannot help feeling that here is the centre of 
all interest. If you show your pictures at all you 
must show them in Bond Street. It is the gallery for 
all fine arts and for all articles of beauty. Perhaps 
one of the wonderful sights to be seen there, and a 
ii^ls sight which one cer- 



tainly can see nowhere 
else in Eng- 



yf'i 



:V^^ 




















''^m 



5? 



15 



World Pictures 



.tn/fv- ^,„,.., 









-"?^^ 



land or the world, is the long procession of beautiful 
women in hansom cabs, who drive up and down Bond 
Street at all times of the day during the season. I 
remember once walking through this street with a very- 
eminent French painter. We watched the people 
pass and repass, and I remember his remarking that 

the most beautiful 
women he had ever 
seen were here. It 
was not in drawing- 
rooms that he had 
found them, but in 
hansom cabs. 

Just fancy what 
England with its an- 
cient buildings must 
be to an American; 
think how he must 
value the traditions 
which hang ■ round 
the old grey cathe- 
drals and splendid 




England 

time-worn palaces which stud our country in every 
direction ! Take, for instance, Gloucester, and its 
cathedral, and the beautiful old Deanery. I was stay- 
ing there a summer ago with the Dean. We were 
sitting in his study and he said to me: "Do you know 
that this room is 
nearly eight hun- 
dred years old ? 
It was built almost 
immediately after 
the Norman Con- 
quest, and in this 
very room more 
than one of the 
Parliaments of 
England has been 
held ; that was in 
the days when Par- 
liament followed 
the King wherever 
he went. In this 

room Anne Boleyn spent the first years of her wedded 
life, and it is said that her spirit haunts these passages 
to this day." 

There is another Deanery around which the most 
splendid memories hang, the Deanery of E'ly. I was 
there but a short time ago, and almost exactly the 
same associations are grouped round that stately and 
beautiful building as are grouped round the Deanery 
of Gloucester. Edward the Third and his wife 

17 





Philippa used to take their meais every day in the 
room in which the Dean and his family now break- 
fast. The bedroom in which I slept was five hundred 
years old, and is said to be the room built for himself 
by Crawdon, the Abbot of the great Ely monastery. 

Do you know Freshwater in the Isle of Wight, 
where the poet Tennyson used to live, and of which 
he has written so charmingly in that invitation of 
his to Frederic Dennison Morris — " Come, Morris, 
come, come to the Isle of Wight," and he goes 
on to speak of his careless ordered garden and the 
wave that breaks in foam upon the beach ? I scarcely 
know a more lovely bit of English scenery. Then 
there is Dorking, where George Meredith lives, the 
grey landscape, the Surrey Hills, and the corn-fields 
so typical of England. Here you get brilliant colour 
because of the lack of sun ; in fact, in Surrey the colours 
are almost more brilliant than in the East, for the 
sun is not so bleaching and the haze heightens the 
tints. Shakespeare's house at Stratford-on-Avon is 

1 8 



Great Britain 



of course one of the most delightful spots in England, 
both from its charm and its associations. 

The scenery of Ireland is somewhat bare and deso- 
late, stretches of vivid green with dark, almost black, 
browns, dotted all over with little white cottages. 
Before one of these half a dozen babies roll contentedly 
in the mud, and a donkey cart, piled up with bright 
green cabbages, is standing outside. The houses for the 
most part suggest bathing machines with their queer 
pointed roofs. The peasants of Ireland are not 
universally beautiful as one is led to imagine, but now 
and again one does come across a fine specimen with 
the blue eyes and the jet black hair and clear Irish com- 
plexion that is really quite unmistakable. 

Wales is the happy hunting-ground of English 
artists. They all swarm to Bettws-y-Coed, where 
David Cox did so much of his work, and all, as far as 
I could see, paint the self-same scene in the Fairy 
Glen. Why these poor dears should come all the 
way to Wales to paint the Fairy Glen is 
'"^■* beyond my comprehension ; they would 




, ^-j..i^- i^ii- ^^^^^:)j^*<-^ le^j'u'-^'si-iii'- 



TjSLAo^u^^^'^'^SSSjBif^LyiM^i -?:iSp. •I.- ^- ;% 



19 



World Pictures 



have done far better to stay at home and paint Chelsea 
or Surrey. But they must get in their mountains and 
their waterfalls. Personally, waterfalls do not appeal 
to me in the least, and the Fairy Glen impressed me 
chiefly because of its remarkable array of sketching 
umbrellas. It was like a camp of soldiers. 



Take the 
finest bit of 
you 



P, 



finest bit of Switzerland and the 
Norway, dip them in water, and 
Scotland. I have never seen Scot- 

d 







■m .^mu 



land myself save through a mist of rain, but it 
was very beautiful nevertheless. It is like taking a 
flatted oil picture and soaking it in oil ; the colours 
are intensified, and even the slaty greys and greens 
develop into vivid tones, rich and full of colour. 
That is the chief charm of Scotland — one sees every- 
where such rich, deep, stirring colour. On rainy 
days, in the mosses and heather, in the stems of 
trees, the roofs of houses, and wherever there is a 



WELSH WOMAN, ENGLAND. 



Great Britain 

chance of a splash of colour, you get it to the full. It 
is not the colour of the Orient — white houses with 
blue shadows, red turbans, and yellow slippers — but 
the rich deep tones that one associates with Rem- 
brandt, trunks of trees and beeches the colour of 
burnt sienna, Vandyke browns and bitumen if possible, 
the grass a vivid emerald, with reds in the scenes as 
deep as the deepest carmine. No country in the 
world is to be compared with Scotland for rich col- 
ouring. One can dispense with Norway and Sweden, 
and even Switzerland, if one has Scotland. 



HOLLAND 








-^^ 



i 



■-. A% 



ROTTERDAM 




HOLLAND 



Most people go to Holland purely to study pictures, 
to Haarlem for Franz Hals, to Amsterdam for Rem- 
brandt, and so on and so on, and no doubt a lifetime 
could be spent in the galleries, studying that masterful 
school of old Dutch painters, without nearly exhaust- 
ing all Holland's glorious store. But in their admira- 
tion for the Dutch landscape school, travellers are apt 
to miss the real sources of inspiration, which are before 
their eyes wherever they may go in Holland, and 
which are indescribably attractive alike to the artist 
and to the writer. 

Holland is undoubtedly the country for skies. It 
may be because of the water that abounds everywhere, 
or because of the flatness of the country ; but certain it 
is that one gets, as the Dutchmen have so faithfully 
represented in their pictures, a huge expanse of sky, 
generally of a clear blue with glorious and most fantastic 
masses of rolling pink and white toned clouds of beau- 
tiful form, against which a narrow strip of silver-grey 

25 



World Pictures 




landscape, coloured with 
small red-roofed houses and 
innumerable windmills, is outlined, and every feature 
of this scene one sees clearly and distinctly as though 
it were a model in miniature. It is extraordinary how 
this flat scenery grows upon one after even a short stay 

in Holland, and I 
can quite under- 
stand the remark 
which the Dutch 
Queen, on return- 
ing from Switzer- 
land, made to an 
artist who had the 
honour of paint- 
ing her portrait : 
" Mountains, moun- 
tains, mountains, 1 
am so weary of 
them, and oh, how 




AT VOLENDAM, HOLLAND 



Holland 




glad I am to be back again in my own dear flat 
countryland." 

Edam and Volendam are perhaps the most delight- 
ful little towns in all Holland, and yet the majority of 
people are not aware of their existence and have prob- 
ably never even heard of their names. Edam for 
colour is absolutely unsurpassed by any place I have 
ever seen, and for the colourist as for the etcher it is a 
veritable paradise. Nothing could possibly be more 
beautiful than its delightful old houses with their multi- 
coloured brick work, sometimes so mossy and stained 
by age that it resembles the bloom on a peach ; and 
almost as attractive are the quaint tottering houses 

27 



World Pictures 

abutting on the narrow waterways, covered with flowers 
and green with ferns and lichen. To Volendam one 

journeys from Edam in a httle 
|:£to ! wooden covered-in boat, drawn 

,^!/%|^^^ along the bank of the canal by 

■~-^vt^^<^V^^ means of a rope attached to the 

■^f^fy^'xl/C^^^^ shoulders of a sturdy Dutch- 
A^(\'f\}\ ^X4 man, who plods cheerfully all 
|'-w^'vV\v, - '^.^"^^^-^r the way there and all the way 
^^/ '<l^^^j.--^j^ back for a very trifling sum. 
f^^t^''^-~<^f/}J^'\y Volendam boasts of one long 
^rt^p ^ ■ /"''^'^^ ''-j/ street, from which dozens of 
Y ' f ^ fl J small alleys spring. These 

\\ ^\ ^ are reached by flights of stone 

steps, down which one catches 
glimpses of fine old gabled houses, making a perfect 
jumble of quaint colour and form with, at the back, 
either a tangle of shipping — quaint old hulls with 
brown sails and flapping pennons — or else green- 
watered canals. 

But Volendam interested me chiefly because of the 
crowds of little children swarming in the streets ; girls 
dressed in big white lace caps with flaps, wearing blue 
blouses and skirts, and mufllers of all colours, and corals 
round their dainty little necks ; while the boys were more 
fascinating still, perfect small copies of their fathers, 
dressed in the same clothes and with almost the same 
lines in their tiny faces. They wear baggy trousers of 
all shades of rusty browns, blacks, and blues, tight- 
fitting maroon jackets with immense silver buttons, 

28 



TYPE OF DUTCH RESIDENCE 



Holland 




and red shirts varying from new ruby tones to faded 
old rose, violets, and blues ; deep black velvet caps rise 
above their round pink and white chubby little faces, 
and huge wooden sabots, miles too big for them, are 
on their little feet. 

It was at about the time of the commencement of the 
war in the Transvaal that I 
visited Holland, and from 
the rumours we had heard 
of the intense hatred of the 
Dutch for Englishmen I 
quite expected to be badly 
treated. As it happened, 
it was entirely the reverse. I 
never met with more charm- 
ing and delightful people 
in my life, and wherever I 
went I was treated with the 
greatest courtesy and kind- 
ness. Only once did we 
suffer any trouble or any 

29 




World Pictures 







inconvenience whatever, and that was in Volendam 
with a little Dutch boy, who followed us all over 
the village, shouting, " De English berry bad, de 
English berry bad." He looked so sweet in his 
old-fashioned costume and with 
baby face, as he walked backwards, 
repeating the one English phrase 
he knew, that I could n't help 
loving him in spite of his bad 
opinion of us ; and when after a 
time he stumbled and fell back- 
wards, over a log of wood, I 
rushed forward with genuine sor- 
row and commiseration. As I 
picked him up, and set him on 
his feet once more, he looked up 
in my face, laughed and said, " De 
English berry good," and then 
ran shyly away. This was the 
3° 




EDAM; HOLLAND 



Holland 

most serious trouble we experienced during all our 
long stay in Holland. 

The cleanliness of some of the Dutch villages strikes 
one with pleasure and admiration, and one sometimes 
sees women on their hands and knees outside their 




houses scrubbing the very cobble stones, so partic- 
ular are they. Beautiful spotless interiors one sees 
all over Holland, kitchens that Peter de Hooche 
might have sat down and painted just as they stood, 
fine old rooms with polished oak and mahogany fur- 
niture, blue china, brass-bound buckets, kettles, and 
candlesticks, absolutely golden in colour. One does 
not truly appreciate the beauties of brass until one 

31 



World Pictures 




visits Holland. Through the open 
doors of such rooms one catches 
a glimpse of old world gardens 
filled with sweet-scented flowers, 
and the interior, teeming with 
mellow golden light, seems sombre 
by comparison with the brightness 
out of doors. Such scenes bring 
back to one the pictures of De 
H o o c h e, Terburg, 
and Gerard Dow. 

Take, for instance, 
Terburg : what mar- 
vellous painting of 
flesh is here, every 



little feature ex- 
quisitely and simply 
drawn; while the 
colour of a certain 
vermilion dress is as 
fine as anything in 
this world could pos- 
sibly be. There is ^'^ 
no attempt at what is 
called broken colour 
and all those modern 
tricks to overcome 
technical difiiculties 
which only end in 
producing a face that 




.v<.^ 



A PROVINCIAL INTERIOR 



Holland 




resembles nothing so cl 
fresh, clear paint, put 
place. Pictures painted 
in the exquisite method 
of this Dutch school 
must involve a power- 
ful knowledge of the 
materials used for the 
work. It is quite obvi- 
ous that the artists must 
have had their colours 
especially ground and 
prepared, and that the 
fine, enamelled surface 
quality must have been 
the outcome of a tre- 
mendous amount of care 
and labour. One reads 
that it was not at all 



"^ 



osely as a Persian carpet, but 
on solidly and in the right 



t=3 



\ 

^ 






li'tJ'-'/ 







33 



World Pictures 










unusual in those days for a man when he had left 
his studio hermetically to seal the room (entering 
again goodness knows how, by the chimney I should 
imagine), lest he should disturb the dust ; and painters 
have actually been known to go out to sea in a boat 
and stay there until their pictures should be hardened 
and impervious to dust. 

At Haarlem I spent many weeks in the picture gal- 
leries studying the Franz Hals ; in fact, for a time I 
actually lived with these pictures. Imagine a room 
filled with masterpieces, huge, sparkling pictures 
swarming with figures of burgomasters and archers, 
each face a perfect portrait. Such work teaches one 
much. But greater than Terburg, De Hooche, Franz 

34 






■MM,- 





\ 



i 



*f 




f 



-^^^'■. 



A DUTCH FISHERMAN. HOLLAND 



Holland 




Hals, Dow, '" " _£ V 

greater than ^' 

them all, and towering above 
them all, looms the majestic 
figure of Rembrandt, the mas- 
ter. Holland is practically Rem- 
brandt ; he possesses all the 
qualities of the lesser men com- 
bined with his own magical 
genius. All other pictures, I 
was going to say, but I will 
moderate my opinion and say 
almost all other pictures in the 
world, fade before Rembrandt's 
masterpiece — "The Night 
Watch." What elaboration, what 
breadth, what glorious technique 
is here ! Above all, what a golden 

35 




World Pictures 




of them cannot but appear 
slaty, dull, and monoto- 
nous. It is considered a 
smart and modern thing 
to belittle Rembrandt, to 
place Velasquez upon a 
pedestal and Rembrandt 
far beneath him, but peo- 
ple who affect this pose 
have only to go to Hol- 
land, to Amsterdam, and 
to study Rembrandt 
amongst his own surround- 
ings, and I doubt not they 



light these men are 
living in ! One 
cannot tell how it 
is done, whether it 
is painted on gold 
or lit up in some 
way from the back, 
but the people are 
alive, the tones are 
like fire, and as one 
turns from it to the. 
other pictures in the 
room, even the finest 




Holland 

will soon change their tone and admit that Rembrandt, 
if even by that one picture of" The Night Watch," has 
amply earned his right to be placed side by side, if not 
higher than Velasquez. These pictures taught me the 
value of Rembrandt as an etcher, and on returning 
from Holland many a long and pleasant day I have 
spent with the kind help of Professor Sidney Colvin 
enjoying the superb collection of rare proofs in the 
possession of the British Museum. 










37 



FRANCE 



j-5^_JU-Jj^(fS^^^<3iih^l^ 













THE SEIN-E AT PARIS 







FRANCE 



One of the first things, I think, that one notices 
when arriving in Paris are the posters. The walls and 
shops are decorated with works of art, for the posters 
are carefully thought out from the decorative stand- 
point, and each one is a picture in itself. One finds 
this perhaps more in Paris than anywhere else. The 
numerous kiosks, with their blaze of gaily coloured 
papers, are another distinctive feature. In France, as 
in America, even the poorest rag of a half-penny jour- 
nal has its one or two illustrations in colour, — some- 
times not so badly reproduced either. These kiosks 
are invariably the centre of interest, and at all times 
of the day little knots of blue-bloused ou'vrierSy hotel 
gar^ons, and boulevard loungers are to be seen gazing 
open-mouthed at brightly coloured cartoons of Kitch- 
ener being defeated by the Boers, or of Mr. Chamber- 
lain with an abnormally large eye-glass and button 
hole, being worsted in some ridiculous way or another. 
These cartoons are pasted to the advertisement boards, 

41 



World Pictures 







Q' 






>2|l \ "Bm gT f^ . V: 



or sold by a little white-capped old lady within. Cer- 
tainly the Parisian book-stalls are an improvement 
upon the black and grey aspect of the paper shops 
one sees everywhere else in the world. 

Where do the American and English women hail 
from, I should like to know, who parade the streets 
of Paris ? Do they reserve a particularly hideous 
type of garment that they may appear more atrocious 
than ever by the side of the neat, smart, Parisian ladies, 
and be put to shame by the Spotless, tastefully dressed 
bonnes and shop-women who, young or old, pretty or 
plain, manage to present an appearance far more ele- 
gant, sad to relate, than any of our own country-women 
to be seen in the streets of the French capital ? One finds 
in England the most beautiful women in the world, 
and in America the best dressed, yet in Paris they 
must needs appear clothed in what they choose to 

42 



France 



term "good useful garments ; " andnothingin thisworld 
can be more terrible than the good, useful, flat-heeled 
shoe, the useful skirt, and — above all — the useful hat. 
But there they go, swinging along the streets absolutely- 
oblivious of their cruelly unattractive appearance. 
Small wonder that the Parisians have so poor an opin- 
ion of our taste in matters of dress ! 

I once saw a middle-aged woman, evidently on her 
way from Italy through Paris, wearing a summer hat 
(it was then late autumn), trimmed with a large assort- 
ment of poppies, cornflowers, wheat, and bedraggled 
chiffon, — a hat for the existence of which the only 
possible excuse could be that its owner had either 
tumbled down a well head foremost or been out in a 
series of violent storms. " Cest ridicule de porter un 
chapeau comme ^a " was the remark I overheard from a 








43 



World Pictures 

crossing-sweeper near by, and I could not but agree 
with him. 

By way of illustrating the extent to which such 
women will carry this abominable negligence I cannot 
refrain from giving the following remarkable instance. 




7.//^' t^ i^ft3M^K^^SiK^^SA"%- I 




R 









I was sitting enjoying an opera in Paris one evening, 
in the height of the season, when in the middle of 
the performance a woman dressed in mackintosh and 
goloshes, and carrying a number of parcels and a 
canary in a cage, stalked into the theatre and sat down 
in the front row of the stalls. Now there was not a 
soul in that opera house but saw and ridiculed the 
woman, muttering under their breath of the discourtesy 
of " ces affreuses Anglaises." Such are the spectacles 
which make the blood of a patriotic English man or 
woman boil. 

44 



France 

There is one matter in which we differ greatly from 
the French people, and that is in our appreciation of 
the pleasures of home life and of the family circle. A 
domestic existence, such as we lead, would seem to them 
little short of imprisonment. All the Parisian world 
and his wife live out of doors, at all events so far 




as the middle classes are concerned ; they surge through 
the broad white streets and boulevards, and swarm 
outside the numerous restaurants, sipping their cafe 
noir and talking over the gossip and pleasures of the 
day. 

At the time that I was in Paris the Russian fleet had 
arrived, and all the French world, with its usual extrav- 
agance, went mad with enthusiasm and exuberance of 
joy. Men embraced one another in the open street, 
and literally sobbed as they read the accounts of com- 
plimentary Russian speeches to French officials in 
their morning papers. Fetes and holidays and public 

45 



World Pictures 



^ 










rejoicings took place nearly every day in the week, 
when Russian healths were quaffed in extra large 
draughts of absinthe and cognac. French and Rus- 
sian flags fluttered from every window and house-top, 
Russian soups, Russian fish, and Russian valses were 
de rigueur, every ragged gamin whistled the Russian 
national air, while people even went to the absurd 
length of wearing gold rings and lockets with gigantic 
R's gaudily emblazoned upon them. Can enthusiasm 
go further ? Yet what a strong undercurrent of dis- 
content and repressed fury lies beneath this frivolous 
gay exterior ! And of such changeable stuflF is the 
French nature made that this impulsive afi^ection is 
ready at any moment to leap into passionate hatred, 
and the claws of the tiger are hidden closely beneath 
the velvet paw, so that they are prepared to fondle 
almost at the precise moment that they kill. I re- 
member one fete night sitting in a cafe at about the 
period of which I speak. A girl had finished singing, 
and the men were quietly drinking and playing domi- 
noes, when suddenly, almost before one could look 

46 



ON THE SEINE, FRANCE. 



France 










^— \ 

round, there was an uproar ! Some one had discovered 
that the proprietor of the hotel was not flying a Franco- 
Russian flag, and therefore he must be a traitor to 
France. The idea originated probably with one foolish 
man, but in an instant they had all caught the infection. 
Before five minutes were over, absolute chaos reigned 
in the orderly cafe, and not one bottle, glass, or article 
of furniture remained intact. Then, no doubt, that 
wretched hotel proprietor would have strung his house 
over with Russian flags at a moment's notice, and in 
any case had probably only hauled them down for the 
night, yet these people must needs make this disturbance 
to demonstrate their intense patriotic feelings. 

The noble army of Copyists at the Louvre are quite 
a feature of Parisian art life, and very interesting, 
almost pathetic, it is to watch them at their patient 
daily labour. But it is only as one of themselves, by 
attempting to make a sketch of a picture, that one can 
be admitted into this little inner world. The artists live 
apart from others, and understand and appreciate little 
else but their own particular trade. I have seen men 
come day after day and week after week to labour away 

47 



World Pictures 

at the same pictures, and ladies also, who, by the by, 
almost invariably perch themselves upon ladders, and 
copy the largest and most ambitious pictures in the 
gallery. There was one man whom I noticed particu- 
larly because he never painted anything but saints in 
blue dresses, being able for each picture, he proudly 
informed me, to command the sum of thirty-five francs. 
It always struck me, though, that on each picture he 
must spend quite its money's worth in concentrated 
energy. For such a small sum he could only afford 
common colours in bladders, such as flake white and 
yellow ochre ; but to glaze his picture over he required 
rose madder and cobalt, both most expensive colours. 
To watch the ingenuity with which this poor little 
I fellow would steal pig- 

'f ment from off other 

J;ii?M^ __ men's palettes was one 

of my daily, almost 
hourly, amusements. 
This is how it occurred. 
^M^fl^^^-^-^^ From his exalted posi- 
J.|=-— iii^^^^^^^^^^jon on the top of a 
^i;i«gi|k^ I ladder he would catch 
,.^,-^^^cvv,-7^=r: sight of an artist of the 





f^fy I'i'l [gl- 'til li fI'' typical shilling shocker 
^'-^-^ - type, obviously an ama- 






'(« 'ri^^lf^^nd^i'! ''^^ teur, dressed in a velvet 

■^''^^''P'ffp'ir\r,^T jacket, and fitted with 

•,<fc^--H-. all manner of bran-new 

traps, and with extrava- 



France 




gant blobs of colour, squeezed on to his large bran-new 
palette. The little man on the ladder would begin to 
stare at the artist's work with a cold critical eye, which 
the novice soon began to feel. He would turn sharply- 
round, but our impoverished friend was gazing elabo- 
rately at the ceiling. This went on for some time until 
at last the newcomer asked him flatly if he could see 
anything wrong with his picture. 

" No, not at all," replied the other nonchalantly, 
proceeding with his work. 

" Now look here ! I know there 's something you 
don't like about my picture ; be a good fellow and tell 
me what it is." 

" Well," said our wily friend, clambering slowly down 

49 



World Pictures 

from his ladder and standing behind the other, "if you 
really want to know, I tell you frankly that 1 don't 
think that figure is quite, quite in proportion." At 
this the artist began to gesticulate with his right hand, 
as all Frenchmen do, holding the left over his shoulder 




with the palette on his thumb. Flip ! — off went a 
fat curl of rose madder safely folded in the critic's palm. 
Then, as the palette went back again, to make the poor 
wretch still more excited it is suggested that a certain 
blue, which is obviously greenish, is too purple. This 
suggestion always proved a great success : the palette 
was flung back and all the pigment safely scraped off 
with a careful forefinger. Then the helping friend 
went back with his magnificent haul to finish his picture, 
leaving the artist muttering to himself something about 

50 



France 

" Ridiculous ! ridiculous! anybody can see that that's a 
greenish blue. Purple indeed ! " 

Presently you would see him stand up and look 
curiously about him, examining first his coat-tails and 




then his sleeves. After gazing for some time with 
blank amazement at his swept palette, which looked as 
though some one had been sitting on it, he would 
squeeze out more pigment and begin to spoil his work 
by correcting the badly drawn figure ; and, altering the 
offending blue to verdigris, he would probably end his 
days in the nearest lunatic asylum. 

Parisian life has its charms, but French country life 
is, in my opinion, still more attractive. I once spent 
some months at a little country town on the Seine, and 
the subjects to be procured there for pictures as well 

SI 



World Pictures 




as for studies were simply superb. There were the 
patient fishers who never seemed to catch so much as a 
sprat, for all their labours ; the river barge life and the 
wonderful colour effects produced at all times on the 
river. When the tide is low the sky reflected in 
the mud flats produces a bluey tone quite indescribable, 
and when the tide is high on late autumn evenings a 







■/A- 



52 



A KIOSC^UE, PARIS 



France 

purple haze envelops river and sky, while the golden 
lights from every barge and the new slim silver moon 
above the bridge are the only touches of colour, and 
the deep silence is broken only by the plodding of a 




weary old horse dragging a heavy boat along the river 
bank. 

Some of the scenery in France is truly beautiful : the 
grey landscapes, the slim avenues of carefully trimmed 
trees, the well-wooded forests with, in the autumn, their 
magnificent carpets of salmon leaves mingled with 
silver stems. 

French hotel life in a small town is quite an experi- 
ence, and it is always the same, wherever one may go. 

53 



World Pictures 

There is the same indifferent red wine, and the half- 
dozen unsatisfactory courses for every meal, and invari- 
ably the same group of commercial travellers. To 
watch these gentlemen at their meals, though a repul- 
sive, is sometimes rather an amusing sight, the business 
they make over it, as though their very life depended 
on it. The importance they attach to the tucking in of 
the serviette, and the spreading it over their capacious 
chests, the yard-long loaves of which they will eat 
almost the whole during one meal, and the violent way 
in which they gesticulate, as though in a towering rage 
with one another, — all these things are so many indi- 
cations of character well worth studying. 



54 



NORMANDY 



M/il' 



L!|»vi^ixt.r 










AN OLD FASHIONED HEARTH 



m 







NORMANDY 

It is good to get away from London, from the social 
degradation, the toadying to the rich, the petty 
meannesses, the crowded " At Homes," and to find 
oneself in one of the peaceful little villages of Nor- 
mandy, if only for a few 
weeks. It is good to live 
for a time amongst the sim- 
ple kindly people, who still 
cling to the traditions of 
their ancestors, loving to 
do as they did, taking a 
pride in their beautiful 
old houses, and striving to 
preserve them from decay. 
That usefulness is the basis 
of all righteousness and 
true art one realises to the 
full in Normandy. These 
grand old houses, with 

57 




World Pictures 

their massive rafters, projecting gables, quaint niches, 
window seats, and corners, bringing back memories 
of the mediaeval days that we set such store by, 
this strength and simplicity of design that we ad- 




mire so greatly, are in reality merely the outcome of 
the simple, pure lives of the people. These houses 
were built with a view to comfort and usefulness, in an 
age when men gave thought and consideration to every 
work of their hands, however great or insignificant. 
No one followed his neighbour then or strove after a 
certain style of architecture, but each man built his 
house according to his requirements and his tastes ; 
built it strongly so that it might be handed down 
unto his children's children in good repair ; built it 
sumptuously according to his means. His offspring 
in their turn enriched the " family mansion " with 

58 



ROUEN, NORMANDY 



i 



Normandy 

carvings and improved it still further, each faithfully 
carrying out the ideas of their elders, and guided, as 
it were, by a kind of artistic intuition. 







A great many of these houses have, of course, 
become uninhabitable. Though black and stained with 
age, they are still beautiful, as they lean one against 
the other, tottering on the verge of ruin. The new 
houses are built very much on the same lines, half 
timbered, but not so richly carved, and are surrounded 
by flowering shrubs and creeping vines. 

They are a conservative people, these Normans, 
living much the same lives as did their ancestors hun- 
dreds of years ago ; in fact, they are almost Oriental 
in their unchangeableness. One cannot imagine liberty 

59 



World Pictures 



flourishing in Normandy, nor picture to oneself fans 
nailed to the fine oak walls and umbrellas glued to 
the raftered ceilings. It would be, in fact, just as incon- 
gruous as to attempt Gothic architecture in London. 
There would be a want of fitness in living in a mediae- 
val house nowadays. We should have to begin all 



11 iMlill-i^^^^ 






mm 

1 \ \\\t\fi V 






' I I 



H §). 







'■ 111 n' in-"' PT'IV nP f 



over again and live simpler and better lives. Such 
things should not be forced, but allowed to come 
about naturally. 

Some of our modern inventions are becoming quite 
beautiful objects because they have been designed 
purely for the sake of their usefulness and nothing 
else, every detail in them being designed to serve 
some purpose. Take, for instance, a hansom cab, 
that most useful of conveyances. The West has pro- 

6o 



CATHEDRAL AT LILLEBONNE 



Normandy 

duced no greater triumph architecturally. Then again, 
the much-abused bicycle is developing into quite a 
thing of beauty, simply because it has been carefully 
thought out with regard to its usefulness and comfort 
alone. Its only blot is, perhaps, the maker's name 
or crest, in which his own decorative instincts have 
been brought into play, with almost infallibly exe- 
crable results. 



6i 



BRITTANY 



}M^^ 



•''■l/r / ■■ 






VEGETABLE MARKET, BRITTANY. 






K^"A 



r 



( ^• 



.*^' 



W^b^ 







BRITTANY 



No part of France is more useful for artistic studies 
than Brittany, no town more picturesque than Pont- 
Aven. There costume, architecture, craft of all sorts, 
physiognomy, manners, and customs are primitive and 
unique. There I found myself in the midst of an 
amazing nest of French and American painters, all the 
newer lights of the French school. There one was 
free to work at whatever one liked, yet with unlimited 
chances of widening, by daily argument, one's knowl- 
edge of technical prob- 
lems. For two or three 
years I remained on this 
battlefield of creeds, and 
conflicts of opinion raged 
constantly. Every one 
was frantically devoted 
to one or other of the 
dominating principles 

65 




World Pictures 



of the modern school. There was a regular bevy 
of schools there. One, called the Stripists, painted 
in stripes, with vivid colour as nearly prismatic as 
possible, all the surrounding scenery ; then came 
the Dottists, who painted in a series of dots ; there 
were also the Spottists — a branch of the Dot- 
tists, whose differ- 
ence from the latter 
was too subtle for my 
comprehension. Men 
there were who had a 
theory that you must 
ruin your digestion be- 
fore you could paint a 
masterpiece. No physi- 
cally healthy person, 
they declared, could ever 
hope to do fine work. 
^And they used literally 
to try to bring about 
indigestion. 

One man, celebrated for his painting of pure saints 
with blue dresses, over which Paris would go crazy, 
never by any chance attempted to paint a saint until 
he had drunk three glasses of absinthe and bathed his 
face well in ether. Another poor dear creature de- 
cided that he was going to have an exhibition of 
merry-go-rounds in Paris which should startle all 
France. He, too, had a theory that the only way to 
get at the soul of the thing was to paint when quite 

66 




BRETON PEASANT 



Brittany 

drunk ; he maintained that the merry-go-rounds 
whirled round faster then, and I never doubted him 
for an instant. One day I went to his studio. I was 
dazed. I did n't know whether I was standing on my 
head or on my heels ; catherine-wheels were n't in it. 
It was quite impossible to see Black Bess or any of the 
pet horses we knew 
so well, for the pic- 
tures were simply 
one giddy whirl. 
Then there was the 
bitumen school, a 
group of artists who 
never painted any- 
thing but white sun- 
lit houses with 
bitumen shadows. 
A year or two after- 
wards a terrible thing 
invariably happened. 
Without any warn- 
ing whatsoever the 
pictures would sud- 
denly slide from off their respective canvases onto the 
floor, the bitumen having melted. 

The Primitives, again, afforded me pure joy. Their 
distinctive mark was a walking stick, carved by a New 
Zealand Maori, which they always carried about with 
them, as they said it gave them inspiration. And so 
powerful was the influence of these sticks that even 

67 




World Pictures 

the head of a Breton peasant assumed the rugged 
aspect of these primitive carvings in their paintings. 
The most enthusiastic disciple of this curious sect was 
a young man who was continually receiving marvel- 
lous inspirations. Once, after having shut himself up 
for three days, he appeared at length among us, look- 






-f<^\ 




ing haggard and ravenous. Without a word he sat 
down heavily near a table, called for some absinthe, 
and giving out one huge groan, sunk his head in his 
hands and murmured, "Ah me ! ah me ! " Of 
course we were all in a fever to know what the mys- 
tery was. After some minutes of dead silence he rose 
majestically from his chair, stretched forth one arm, 
and with a far-away look in his eyes said, " Friends, 
last night when you were all asleep a beautiful crea- 
ture came to me in spirit form and taught me the 
secret of drawing, and I drew this." Then he brought 

68 



A BRETON WOMAN, BRITTANY 



Brittany 

out a picture and showed it to us. It was certainly 
far above his usual style, and the more credulous of 
us envied his good fortune. Some weeks afterwards, 
however, it was discovered by a painter with detective 
instincts that the marvellous vision was in reality no 




more nor less than a chambre au clair^ that is to say, 
a prism through which objects are reflected on paper, 
enabling one to trace them with great facility. 

The hotel where we all stayed was kept by a 
woman called Julia. From being a maid servant 
she had succeeded by reason of her own untiring 
energies in becoming the proprietress of this huge 
establishment. Her fame as hostess and manager 
was bruited all over France. Every one seemed to 
know of Julia, and year after year artists and their 
families came back regularly to stay with her. There 

69 



World Pictures 




was one man, a retired officer, 
whom no one could manage 
but Julia. He had come to 
stay in Pont-Aven, because /^"; 
he could live there for a few ^^ 
francs a day, and drink the 
rest. He suffered from 
hallucinations and took 
great pleasure i n chasing 
timid artists over the country 
side. He was consequently ' 
the terror of the village. He 
had a house on the quay, and 
one early winter's morning, when the snow lay thick 
upon the ground, just because a small vessel came 
into the river and began blowing a trumpet or making 
a noise of some kind, he sprang out of bed in a tower- 
ing rage, rushed in his nightshirt into the cold street, 

and began sharpening his 
sword on a rock, shouting 
to the ship's captain the 
while to come out and be 
killed if he dared. The 
captain very naturally did 
not dare. 

The Breton peasant is 
full of dirt and dignity. 
He lives on coarse food, 
lodges with the pigs, and 
rarely changes his clothes ; 
70 





Brittany 

yet nowhere will you 
meet with such dignity 
of bearing, charm of 
manner, and almost 
nobility of feature, as 
among the peasantry of 
Brittany. On entering 
__ the poorest cottage you 
are received with old 
world courtesy by the 
man of the house, who 
comes forward to meet 
you in his working gar- 
ments, with dirt thick 
upon his hands, but with the dignity and stateliness 
of an emperor, begging that you will honour his 
humble dwelling with your presence. He sets the 
best he has in the house before you ; it may be only 
black bread and cider. 



but he bids you par- 
take of it with a kingly 
wave of the hand which 
transforms the humble 
fare. 

These peasants re- 
mind me very much 
of Sir Henry Irving. 
Some of the finest 
types are curiously like 
him in feature, the same 




71 



World Pictures 

magnificent profile and well-shaped head. It is quite 
startling sometimes to come across Sir Henry in black 
gaiters, broad-brimmed hat, and long hair streaming 
in the wind, ploughing in the dark brown harvest 
fields, or else chasing a pig, or dressed in gorgeous 
holiday attire, perspiring manfully through a village 







gavotte. Surely none but a Breton could chase a 
pig — that most elusive of animals with the most 
tapering of tails — without losing his self-respect, or 
count the teeth in a cow's mouth and look dig- 
nified at the same time. No one else most certainly 
could dance up and down in the broiling sunshine 
for an hour on end, and preserve a composed de- 
meanour. 

The Breton peasant is a person quite apart from the 
rest of the world. One feels, whether at a pig-market 

72 



PIG MARKET 



Brittany 



P 



'S 



r 



ii U 






or a wayside shrine, that these 
people are dreamers, living in 
a romantic past. Unchanged 
and unpolished by the outside 
world, they cHng to their own 
beautiful traditions ; every stone 
in their beloved country is in- 
vested by them with poetic and 
heroic associations. Brittany 
seems as though it must have 
always been as it is now, even 
in the days of the Phoenicians, 

and it seems impossible to imagine the country in- 
habited by any but mediaeval people. In the silver 
landscapes with their sharp touches of vivid green 
you see Corot's pictures everywhere. 





73 



SWITZERLAND 







i 



I 



GOESCHENEN, SWITZERLAND. 




; -^.1 -:^« "=<*''- "■'*«=- 



SWITZERLAND 



There is no country in the world quite like Switzer- 
land, with its glittering fields of snow and its magnifi- 
cent stretches of green, changing constantly in aspect 
at all times of the day. Fancy Monte Rosa at day- 
break with the yellow-flushed sky deepening into pmk, 
and then changing into blue, until one sees a glistening 
ridge of mountains far ahead, with the sun blazing 
down upon them so dazzlingly that one's eyes can 
scarcely bear the brilliant vision. 
What I have noticed especially 
about Switzerland is that one 
gets such clear limpid colour- 
ing; in the extreme distance there :f;i^;$i|^|s|=>,^\ '-'-'ii 
are pearly greys and greens and 'iTl] 'Ji'n"''- 
rose tones, butm the foreground ^rsj wji • - 
the colours are rich, dark greens 
and dark browns. The timber 
looks like burnished gold, and 
sometimes towards sunset the 
natural wood of the houses 

77 




':{l""Sal 



Sv'^/^j.i'.'a"- 



World Pictures 




has appeared so brilliant that I have actually gone up 
close, and peered right into them, to see if they were 
not made of metal. The colour changes are very 
violent, from wet to sun, from storm to calm, 

I remember once going up to the mountains near 
Geneva. It was a brilliant sunlit day, with a great 



^f 



/'vr 






''it 



■4 







'^<£-^ 



78 



CHALET NEAR LUCERNE 



Switzerland 




deal of wind and clouds of dust ; but in the afternoon 
suddenly, very suddenly, there blew up a tremendous 
pile of clouds far over the mountains, followed by a 
good deal of thunder and lightning, and a deluge of 
rain which lasted half an hour. Then the storm 
seemed to be swept to leeward, and the sun burst 




79 



World Pictures 




out, making every little leaf 

and twig and blade of grass 

sparkle in the sunshine, as 

though laden with jewels, 

while the birds burst into 

a perfect frenzy of song. 

The magnificent greens of 

the foreground almost caused 

"% one to forget the dazzHng 

',./»... , '• ' white mountains beyond. 

-"■-*'.' Nature resembled a handful 

of seaweed, dragged out of the water and thrown 

dripping on to silver sand. 

In this very place Mr. Ruskin was walking one 
evening with a friend, and in turning a corner they 
came full in view of a range of snow-clad mountains, 
absolutely crimson in the setting sun. As the colour 
gradually faded away, Ruskin turned to his friend, and 







80 



GOESCHENEN, SWITZERLAND 



Switzerland 




said very sadly, " Ah, space 

is infinite; why cannot time 

be made infinite also ? " 

Ruskin more than any one , 

else has illustrated to us 

with the magic art of his 

pen and also of his pencil J| 

— I care not whether his 

art was correct or not — 

surely he more than any -^^ iis^^ 

one has taught us some- "^~~ 

thing of the making of the Alps. The other day I 

was looking at a picture that he called the " Buttress 

of an Alp," and nothing, it seems to me, could give us 

a finer idea of the mystery and the solemnity of the 

Swiss mountains than that sketch of his, which, though 

obviously the work of an amateur, was delightful in its 

suggestion of sadness. 

Unfortunately, most people who go to Switzerland 




8i 



World Pictures 







look upon it only as a modern show place, and in so do- 
ing lose a vast amount of pleasure, for they appear to 
forget altogether that Switzerland is, for its size, with 
the exception of Palestine, more fraught with splendid 
historic memories than almost any other part of the I 
world. You cannot pass down the lake of Geneva upon 
a brilliant summer day without recalling the battles that j 
were fought upon it in the days of the Romans. | 

^ ___ And Geneva itself con- i 
jures up memories of the 
PfJ" most extraordmary mter- 
est. It was here that the i 
protestant Calvin burnt 
his brother protestant I 
Servetus, for the slight- i 
est difference in their mu- 
tual faith. Jean Jacques | 
82 




INTERLAKEN 



Switzerland 




H, 

^^^^. 



"^^S^^^^^msm 





Rousseau laid the scene of many of his most stormy 
romances upon the blue lake of Geneva, Voltaire 
lived and died beside the lake, and in its immediate 
neighbourhood Gibbon brought his " Decline and 
Fall of the Roman Empire " to a brilliant conclusion. 
Madame de Stael's most brilliant moments were passed 
in this delightful locality, and no one can visit the 
castle of Charlemagne without recaUing with a thrill 
Byron's splendid lines upon the infatuated Bonnivard. 




*^'-^I; 



83 



World Pictures 




It was in Switzer- 
land that William Tell 
played that practical 
joke that was not 
wholly unconnected 
with bows and arrows 
and an apple upon 
that evil tyrant Ges- 
sler. It was in Swit- 
zerland that the brave 
Arnold fell at the head 
of his men, dying the 
most splendid death 
that a patriot has ever 



been known to die. Switzer- 
land is indeed not only to be 
valued for its superb natural 
beauties, but as the homeland of 



some of the greatest people the ,^ /k^ ^'^'f^0W 
world has ever known. " x'^TTa..^, fM^ 



There is one village in Switzer- 
land where, if you call out in 
the middle of the day " Waiter," 
everybody rushes out of every 
house shouting, " Yes, sir." I 
also noticed that Switzerland 
is curiously devoid of cuckoo- 
clocks and art ; this only by 
the way. 

84 





■,--^.. 



INTERLAKEN, SWITZERLAND. 



Switzerland 




There are few more charming experiences than go- 
ing up in the train from Interlaken to Grindelwald. 
You go up and up, every moment nearing the eternal 
mountains with the eternal snow upon them ; you 
catch the most superb glimpses of the crimson sunset 
sky reflected upon the brilliant white of the mountains, 
and then as the darkness comes on, your train runs 




World Pictures 




into Grindelwald. Then there is the glorious sensa- 
tion of waking the next morning : the morning before 
you were in hot, dusty Geneva ; this morning you are 
in the finest, the most exquisite climate in the world. 




86 



A MOUNTAIN TORRENT 



Switzerland 









■^w.^ 









'' I 



■//^ 






All is absolute freshness ; you can almost smell the 
snow and the ice, and from your bedroom window you 
see ghttering afar off one of those beautiful but deadly 
glaciers for which Switzerland is so celebrated. You 
can go for a walk, to the blue ice grotto, always with 




87 



World Pictures 










those vast silent snow-capped mountains towering 
above you, and in doing so you pass one of those 
curious mountain horns with which the natives call up 
the echoes from the mountains. Nothing more ex- 
quisite can be imagined than those echoes tinkling 
down the mountain side from point to point, repeat- 
ing themselves a hundred times over. When you 
reach the grotto itself, you find that you are hedged 
in, as it were, by the most perfect prismatic colours of 

"^ «1J J_u^iiiS nil '' 



^3' i 



- ■ X 1 ,1 



m'y ■■^'^M 




88 







I 



LAKE OF LUCERNK 



Switzerland 




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green and white and blue ; and through it all is a 
transparency that you cannot describe. In the after- 
noon you will perhaps go for another walk, winding 
along beside one of those awful defiles that you 
sometimes come upon in the Alps, — a snow stream, 
cold as ice, and white and grey in colour, running be- 
neath your feet, and the whole landscape charged with 
the freshness of the icy breeze. 




"JJ'^ym^^-" 



89 



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"4' 



NEIGHBORHOOD OF C H A M O U N I X 



ITALY 




A DOORWAY, VENICE, ITALY 



A. ■■ 



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ITALY 

Every city in Italy has a character peculiarly its own. 
Each is in a way unique and totally dissimilar from its 
fellows, and each is proud in the possession of a dozen 
or more structures famed for their architectural beauty. 
Venice, the stately queen of the Adriatic, is literally 
made up of magnificent palaces, and churches, and 
fine examples of architecture, of such rich and varied 
wealth and such diversity of styles that one is almost 
overpowered. Gothic palaces stand side by side with 
venerable specimens of the Renaissance, Venetian, and 
Italian periods, architectural glories sufficient to turn 
the heads of all artists and lovers of the picturesque. 
Time has laid heavy hands upon Venice, yet it seems 
to have augmented rather than diminished her charm. 
This fairy water-city was born beautiful, and beauti- 
ful she will remain to the end of the chapter. Like 
Cleopatra, like the serpent of old Nile, " age cannot 
wither nor custom stale her infinite variety." This is 
clearly proved by the fact that painters continue year 
by year to paint her, without the public showing signs 

93 



World Pictures 

of weariness. Perhaps the failure of the artists to re- 
produce the undying charm of that dazzling pearl of 
cities is both the excuse and the reason for the per- 
tinacity of the tribe. Woman-like, she eludes them ; 
man-like, they still pursue. 

It is difficult for any one to see the often represented 
Venice with a wholly fresh eye, and to give a flavour 




of freshness to familiar topics. It is therefore wisdom 
to avoid those important monuments which belong to 
history, and are part of every one's experience, and 
rather to seek out Venice in her humbler and more 
homely aspects, in out-of-the-way nooks where no one 
has painted her before, to go down side canals where 
old houses and rickety archways harbour the true 
Venetian, and fascinate the observer who is not too 
keen of smell. Here are capital opportunities for 
varied combinations of rich colouring ; houses built 
of weather-worn brick and stone rise steeply from 
out canals of green water ; there are grated windows 
and red shutters ; doorways, picturesque and shabby, 

94 



STREET IN VENICE 



Italy 

coloured by the lapse of time, half lost in gloom, but 
still conveying a sense of beauty, through which the 
eye catches glimpses of a long-buried past. Here is 
a washerwoman's house of multi-coloured brick-work, 
with grass-green shutters ; there a strip of red cloth 
hangs over a carved stone balcony, upon which the 
light lingers lovingly, while four women employ them- 




selves in hanging white clothes upon a line before a 
yellow-washed wall. After a shower of rain the colours 
of these narrow waterways show themselves in their 
finest and most vivid aspects. One notices then the 
stained marble and the rusted iron-work, for their 
colouring is brought out and intensified a hundred- 
fold. 

Few have seen the real Venice, the Venice of Rus- 
kin, and Turner, and Whistler. Pictures have been 
painted by the score, brutal pictures with metallic re- 
flections and cobalt skies, all wonderfully alike, and 
equally untrue. Venice is not for the cold-blooded 
spectator, for the amateur, and the art dabbler, but for 

95 



World Pictures 



the enthusiastic colourist and painter, the man who 
sees and does not merely look. Visit Venice in a 
healthy, simple spirit, uninfluenced by sickly senti- 
ment, and one cannot but be amazed and overpowered 
by its daintiness of form and its fairy-like colour. It 
is a wonderland that bursts upon one. Venice is a 
revelation. She resembles a scintillating opal. 

W^hen one looks at the city from a distance, its rows 
of stately pink and violet toned palaces, reflected in the 
pale green water, appear to be shrouded in a grey veil 
of atmosphere, like a casket of precious stones en- 
circled by a silver haze, or like a brightly painted ceil- 
ing reflected in a black lacquer floor. You are seeing 
Nature under new conditions, as though standing on 
your head. Sir Edward Burne-Jones was wont to 
declare that to paint Italy as she should be painted 
one must needs live for three thousand years ; the first 

thousand should be devoted 
■-ffiir,-^M^ Ff^'Wi---^ to experimentmg m various 

^^ei9-.|i3^|i f/ "^edia; the second to pro- 

smnf^m-^^^^^^ii- ■ 1 ducing works and destroying 

them ; the third to slowly com- 
pleting the labour of centuries. 
He would never have dreamed 
of spending a painting holiday 
beyond Italy, that is, unless 
he had been permitted to live 
over five thousand years, and 
even thus it was his firm opin- 
ion that no man could paint 
96 










M 



^.^- 



Italy 






zt 






g:s,ii>a'ji.'- 



St. Mark's, because it was unpalntable ; mere pigment 
could not do it. 

There is an artistic atmosphere about Venice that 
affects every one who visits it, however unsympathetic 
he may be. Harsh voices become modulated, cross- 
grained, querulous natures sweetened, and even the 
flat-faced, spectacled tourists, when they step from 
the railway station into a little waiting black gondola, 
and glide out on the smooth steely waters of the canal, 
into a mystic water-city alive with a myriad glistening 
lights, become unconsciously and despite themselves 
transformed into beautiful and delightful people. 
Women who have hved in Venice, when they come 
to London, should be accompanied wherever they go 
by a four-wheeler full of Venetian backgrounds, if 
they are at all desirous of keeping up their reputations 
as beauties. 

v: I lived for six months in Venice, and I saw and 
painted the superb city of the Doges under every 

97 



World Pictures 









t'-f 










possible aspect. I have seen Venice in early dawn, 
at midday, in the evening, at night, in rain, and in 
sun ; and I can never decide at what time of the day 
she appears most beautiful. Venice at daybreak is 
like a phantom scene ; everything is of a delicate 
pearly grey, the distant dome of the Salute is illu- 
mined with a faintly rosy glow, and the only spot 
of positive colour is formed by the orange sail of 
a fishing boat, as it glides noiselessly past. At mid- 
day Venice is enveloped in a warm golden light; 
there are rich red browns, orange yellows, and burnt 
siennas, all the tints of a gorgeous wall-flower. The 
clear green water is now alive with orange red sails, 
but the quay is the centre of life. There a busy 
crowd is buying and selling silver fish, and fruit and 
vegetables are being bartered. A pumpkin barge 
is in the act of unloading its lovely orange and 
golden freight against a pink palace, flecked with the 

98 



A GARDEN. ROME, ITALY 



Italy 

delicate tracery of luminous violet shadow ; the sky- 
is light blue overhead, and a long, sUm black gondola 
at the foot of the steps makes the one sombre touch. 
And, most glorious of all, the whole scene is reflected 
again with a liquid gleam in the water below. The 
piazza at this time of the day is alive with countless 
crowds of pigeons, the sacred birds of Venice, all 
pushing, and jostling, and stretching their purple 
and emerald necks to the light ; the square is dark- 
ened by their wings. Venice at night is most beauti- 
ful of all. Purple is the prevailing colour then, deep 
purple. Palaces which in the daytime are of every con- 
ceivable hue, now loom pale and dim in the purple haze, 
and the water is like tempered steel, smooth and shining. 
There is only one black note — a passing gondola, 
swift and silent, and even its interior is bright golden. 




99 



L.ofC. 



World Pictures 



Naples, dearly loved yet much abused Naples, 
how familiar it all seemed to me ! Where had I 
seen Naples before ? In the comic operas, of course, 
in the scene in the " Runaway Girl," and in coloured 
picture books. I recognised it at once. There were 
the same tall white houses with balconied windows, 
the heat, the laziness, the beggary, the gaiety com- 






h^.^^:y^' 










bined with absolute wretchedness, the crowded streets 
filled with people, the carriages of all descriptions 
bowling along at breakneck speed, and, above all, 
the same brilliant sharp light (limelight), and strange 
southern feeling about the place. But the Bay of 
Naples was perhaps most familiar of all. I knew 
it line for line, and tone for tone. I was neither 
disappointed nor surprised, for I had seen it so often 
before. Naples, in fact, behaved to me honourably 
and just as it should have done ; the sky and the 



INSIDE SAINT MARK'S, VENICE 



Italy 

sea were not one whit less blue nor less beautiful 
than I had expected, and Vesuvius gave out just 
the correct and orthodox curl of blue smoke, not 
too large nor yet too small. Her conduct was really- 
commendable and worthy of great praise. Here was 
no cause for the burying of shattered ideals, but for 
soothing, purring satisfaction. 




We went at first, as does every English tourist, 
to Cook's, with the vague idea of going to Pompeii 
or Vesuvius. There we were told that a party had 
not been made up as yet, but that some people would 
probably arrive soon : would we wait? As we sat 
there, travellers poured in by the score, peevish 
American spinsters, English men and women dressed 
in hideous unsightly garb such as they would not 
dare to wear at home, all complaining, and pestering, 
and haggling about the- afternoon's enjoyment in loud, 
rude voices. Our minds were made up ; we slunk 

lOI 



World Pictures 

quietly out of the office, hailed one of the many- 
carriages, and drove off into the country. 

Up a brilliant white road we went, with white 
houses and white walls on either side of us, over 
which flowers of red and yellow poured their masses 
of blossom, past groups of hollow-cheeked, miserable 



iii'ili 







children, half naked, and all screaming for pennies. 
The heat was overpowering and terribly fatiguing; 
no wonder that the peasants lay all the day sleeping 
under doorways and bridges, in any spot where a 
patch of shade and comparative coolness was to be 
obtained. A barrow of watermelons and muscatel 

1 02 



A STREET IN NAPLES, ITALY 



Italy 










grapes tempted us with their green freshness as we 
passed, and for a few pence the carriage was loaded 
with fruit. The grapes were sour, but the melons 
opened pink and juicy, as cold as ice, and wonderfully 
refreshing. The driver begged that we would give 
him the rind for his horse. Poor beast, he looked 
terribly tired, for the road was very steep. Presently 
we came out on to a flat terrace, and there, rolling 
far below us, lay distant Naples, with its clustering 
white houses glistening in the sun, and the blue 
Adriatic beyond. 




World Pictures 

Up we went again, until we reached the museum, 
where we were courteously received by the chief official, 
a gentleman of great culture, who showed us the finest 
view of all, a marvellous panorama stretching beneath 
our feet, which interested me not at all ; then we were 
taken into his own private study, which interested me 







greatly, stocked as it was with priceless gems of sculp- 
ture, painting, and literature. An intelligent little dog 
was trained to fetch whatever his master wanted from 
the adjoining room by a whisper in his ear. We were 
directed to visit a garden over the way, where the 
famous palm tree with Naples in the distance was to 
be seen. 

A whining Neopolitan pestered us with requests that 
we should taste his orange liqueur and buy a bottle, 

104 



NAPLES AND THE BAY 



Italy 

only one bottle. This made us cross, for we were very 
hot, and neither I nor my daughter drink wine. More- 
over, the man was blocking our view. To get rid of 
him we attempted to climb a wall by the side of a well. 
I got over safely, but in attempting some more graceful 
and acrobatic feat, my daughter missed her footing, and 










fell headlong into the well below. On rising to the 
surface, she clung, like grim death, to a small piece 
of mossy stone projecting from the side of the well, 
and I, above her, waited in agony of mind, scared and 
shivering, until ropes and ladders were lowered, and 
she half walked and was half pulled up. The most 
excited person of all was the wine merchant, who leant 
over her, his face deadly white with patches of green, 
pouring pints of his precious orange liqueur down her 

105 



World Pictures 










throat, gratis. The garden belonged to him and he 
was liable to a heavy fine and punishment for leaving 
a deep well of sixty feet uncovered, ready to entrap 
unlucky visitors. I never saw a man so frightened in 
my life, as he dried the damp clothes, lent rugs and 
cloaks, and offered cases of liqueur. He even went 
down on his knees, and quavered that he would give 
us half his worldly wealth if only we would not inform 
the police. 

That same afternoon we found our way to the beach, 
and to the fish-market, the dirtiest, poorest quarter of 
dirty, poverty-stricken Naples. The sun was setting 
gloriously, shedding its rosy light over the silver waters 
of the bay, and I was anxious to secure the fleeting 
effect. But no sooner was the paint box opened than 
we were surrounded by dozens of half-naked children, 
dancing and grimacing, peeping over our shoulders 

1 06 



CAPRI, ITALY 



Italy 



and under our arms, almost lifting us off the ground 
with their jostling and pushing, and entirely obscuring 
the view. Every minute they seemed to gather in 
force and number, until I should think there were quite 
three hundred children assembled. The brilliant colours 
were fast fading from the sky, and the only thing to be 
done was to make for a blank wall some yards off and 
plant our backs against it. We started running ; of 
course the children were overjoyed, and ran too, fight- 
ing and falling over our feet. There was obviously no 
work to be done that day, and we went off in despair. 
Unfortunately, we gave some of them money, — a fatal 
mistake, for they followed us out into the streets and 
all over Naples to the very door of our hotel, begging 
and screaming for charity. 

The older one gets the more one realises that Italy 
is the centre of the world, the cradle of all true art, a 
country which has produced the finest specimens of 
every article that has ever been made, 
from pictures down to fire-irons. Sup- 
pose a millionaire with taste — a phe- 
nomenon which prob- 

zh 

the best of everything, A ^-^ i^ •- •v-'^ 
he must needs go to ^^4L1LM 
Italy. Once there, he ' ^"^^ 

can procure every sin- '^>>--^/ /ll 
gle thing necessary to j 

107 



ably does not exist 
wishes to furnish his 
London house with 




World Pictures 




his ^establishment, except perhaps his carpets, which the 
Orient can best supply. What is finer than the Italian 
furniture ? Certainly not the Dutch, which by com- 
parison is mere kitchen stuff. The famous Henri II 
chair was built upon Italian lines. Where else can 
you procure velvets equal to those from the looms of 
Genoa ? What is finer than that metal work by Ben- 
venuto Cellini ? Where can be procured finer ex- 
amples of glass, silver plate, architecture, painting, 
sculpture, and literature than in Italy ? 

All these things were produced at a time when men 
had something to say or do, and it was an exertion to 




1 08 



REMAINS OF ANCIENT R O ^M E 



Italy 

give out what was in them, when princes vied with 
one another in gathering together all the finest students 
of Europe, the best caligraphers, masons, wood-carvers, 
poets, and craftsmen of all kinds that were to be had. 
This was the Renais- ^c-> sance period, the re- 

juvenation of Art J^ which developed and 
developed, and at \C^^] length culminated in 
that great master ^fi'V--/]) Giorgione. He was 
the Whistler of his "^ ffi day, the man who 



Is, 










opened the door, the one great modern genius of his 
period, whose influence remains, and is felt to this day. 
Whistler would never have existed but for Velasquez, 
and Velasquez in his turn would not have existed but 
for Giorgione. It was he who first began to paint 
landscapes as backgrounds to his pictures instead of 
the usual conventional designs. Imagine this young 
Giorgione, with his new ideas, and his sweeps of golden 
colouring, suddenly appearing in a studio full of men, 
all painting in the correct academical style established 
at the period. Such a man must needs influence all 
his fellow students ; even Giovanni Bellini, the Watts 

109 



World Pictures 

of his day, acknowledged the young man's genius and 
almost unconsciously began to mingle Giorgione's 
style with his own. 

This great master produced no more than twelve or 
fourteen works, and the picture of his that appeals to 
me perhaps most of all is an altar-piece of the Virgin 
and Child at Castel Franco. It is painted in the pure 
Giorgione spirit. St. George in armour is at one side, 
resting his arm on a spear which appears to be coming 
right out of the picture, while on the other side there 
is a monk, and in the background a banner of rich 
brocade and a small landscape. 

The Florentine school seems to have begun with 
Giotto, and risen higher and higher until it reached 
Michael Angelo. These two masters have established 
the scale from the lowest bass to the highest treble, 
and no one since seems to have done more than play 
within that scale. There have been grand variations 
and glorious melodies, it is true ; but no one has yet 
gone an octave further. 




SICILY 








':./' 



I 



DESERTED HOUSES 




SICILY 



Palermo impressed me chiefly because of its delight- 
ful situation. A vivid indigo blue sea, a glittering 
white town set in emerald green, and backed by 
scraggy grey blue mountains, — this is the first glimpse 
one catches of the Sicilian capital on arriving by 
steamer, and it puts one in a good humour with the 
place at once. As every ^ 
one knows, Palermo is |\ 
exceedingly rich in vegeta- ?\i\cl 
tion ; groves of orange and 
lemon trees, prickly pears, 
aloes, and cactus plants thrive 
everywhere. But such 
scenery as this is not re- 
stricted to Sicily, which dif- 'iS-l 
fers, in fact, very little from 
any southern country in 
Europe. 

113 




World Pictures 




every spoke of which 
is an excuse for an 
extra bit of colour. 
You will see per- 
haps a chrome yel- ~ 
low wheel picked out 
with verdigris green 
and ornamented with 
a line of vermilion. 
The body of the cart 
is generally violet, 
smothered with 
painted panels, de- 
picting religious 
scenes, brilliant pro- 
cessions, battles, and 



Now, when I look 
back upon my stay 
there, the only feat- 
ures that I can re 
member as being 
remarkable for their 
distinctive nature 
and as being es- 
pecially character- 
istic of Sicily" are the 
mule or donkey carts 
calltdcaretu. These 
are gorgeously 
painted spring-carts, 

- - ., . 







114 



PALERMO, SICILY 



Sicily 



figure subjects, — all 
just about as vivid as 

— and some of them 
more elaborate than 

— many of our acad- 
emy pictures. 

But most entertain- 
ing of all is the donkey 
or horse, generally a 
very poor, lanky ani- 
mal. We laugh at 
him, and he, poor 
beast, is fully con- 
scious of his ridicu- 












lous appearance. Shame 
and degradation are de- 
picted in his melancholy 
eyes, as he trundles the 
Royal Academy about 
the streets of Palermo. 
He feels himself the 
skeleton at the feast, 
with his hair tied up 
in gaily coloured rib- 
bons, as though he 
were a frisky poodle dog 
with nodding plumes on 
his head, tassels and 
beads hung about his 
body, and a little em- 



"5 



World Pictures 




broidered saddle on his back. He alone fails to grasp 
the humour of the situation ; life to him is grim, 
earnest, and so, so melancholy. 






"^^^vN^iyfl^v/ 



^"^ 



\ 



ii6 



4 



ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF PALERMO 



SPAIN 



f% 




%7'^;'f>i,- 







A COURTYARD, SEVILLE, SPAIN. 







SPAIN 



It is rather sad that Sunday, and the recurrence of 
rehgious festivals, such as those of Holy Week, should 
be considered fit occasions for bull-fights, cock-fights, 
fairs, balls, and national gaiety and enjoyment by these 
pious but buoyant Spanish people. So thought I to 
myself on my first morning in Spain, as I watched 
from the point of vantage of my balcony the light, 
joyous crowd of eager Sabbath pleasure-seekers, surg- 
ing through the streets of Seville. Sad indeed! but 
sighs and regrets cannot alter the characteristics nor 
the habits of the people of Spain that have been 
established for generations ; bull-fighting is the na- 
tional sport, and will doubtless remain so until the 
nation itself ceases to exist. 

119 



World Pictures 




Seville, always bright and 
beautiful, at the time of my visit 
was literally bubbling over with 
gaiety. The whole city seemed 
alive ; girls decked out in holi- 
day attire of flowered kerchiefs 
and gay petticoats, with roses 
in their carefully dressed black 
hair, laughed as they passed 
through the evergreen and 
flag-bedecked streets ; the boys 
laughed ; the children laughed as they played at being 
bull in an imaginary gutter arena, charging at an 
outstretched coat ; every one laughed on their way 
to the bull-fight. Their gaiety was infectious. Even 
I, whom the thought of a bull-fight revolted, hastily 
threw on my coat and hat, and calling my compan- 
ion to follow me, bounded down the stairs two steps 
at a time, eager to breathe that same intoxicating joy- 
ous atmosphere, to be swept along in the strong, pure 
sunshine with this crowd of happy laughter-loving 
children. Everything I saw that day fascinated and 
held my attention. I passed down narrow streets 
with windows and balconies that almost met over- 
head ; past loosely built booths of green boughs filled 
with tarts, sugar toys, and reeking cookery ; past men 
and women dancing on a space of green turf, reserved 
for that purpose; they filliped their fingers, rattled 
castanets, and stamped enthusiastically on the ground, 
as they beat out the measure of an accompanying guitar. 



Spain 




The bull-fight itself im- 
pressed me principally be- 
cause of its unreality. It 
never occurred to me that 
those dainty darts covered 
with gorgeously coloured 
ribbons, and thrown with such 
delicacy and precision on to 
so satiny and jet-black, a tar- 
get as the sides of the bull, 
could possibly cause pain or '"• 

suffering to that great, mild- "^\. 

eyed rocking-horse of an animal, mechanically bob- 
bing backwards and forwards. The arena, I thought, 
placed itself perfectly, and formed an excellent com- 
bination of colour. And as to the audience, closely 
packed tier upon tier, as it seemed to the very sky, 
with their myriads of fluttering fans and the sun shin- 
ing full upon them, they were comparable to nothing 
less brilliant in colour than a flower-bed or a carpet of 
jewels. It would be audacity to attempt to describe 
the effect they produced. The only detail in the 
whole performance that I really did not approve of 
were the gentlemen on horseback. They were loaded 
with metal and protected on every side themselves, 
and their one object seemed to be that their horses, 
half-dead, pitiable creatures, should be slaughtered on 
the horns of the bull. The Portuguese method I 
consider to be far more humane and considerably 
better sport, if the term may be applied in this con- 



121 



World Pictures 

nection. There, it is considered as a great degrada- 
tion for a man to lose his horse, which is almost 
invariably from the royal stables. The bull-fight 
itself held no very great attractions for me, and now. 




when I come to look back upon my travels in Spain, 
nought but a very faint and somewhat faded picture 
remains to recall the much vaunted glories of that 
famous spectacle. 

Uppermost in my thoughts is the scene of a thou- 
sand or more Spanish women entering a large marble 
hall in single file. The sun shining through an open- 
ing in the wall, gleamed brightly on the head and 
shoulders of each girl as she passed, lighting up the 
glossy hair adorned with its single rose which made a 



122 



COURTYARD IN SEVILLE 



Spain 

jewel-like spot of colour in the white interior. Dis- 
tinction and charm attended their every movement ; 
the mantillas were arranged either on head or shoul- 
ders with a studied grace ; and the little feet set so 



MM 




daintily and proudly on the ground were " worthy to 
tread the carpet of a palace." All these details give to 
these simple factory girls, busy at their work of rolling 
cigarettes, an almost queenly dignity. And then to see 
the women in the courtyards at their domestic duties : 
peeling vegetables, pumping water, and chatting gaily 
with one another the while, or smiling brightly down 
upon the passer-by from their balconies. 

Spain is a country of courtyards, brilliant and sunlit. 
The general colouring is brilliant white, picked out 

123 



World Pictures 



with small, concentrated touches 
of colour, so that the scene 
literally sparkles. Unlike In- 
dia, where one gets sweeps of 
rich colour, the Holy Land, 
Turkey, or Italy, where the 
sun is a coloured sun, and the 
tones are golden, here the sun 
is white, the tones keen, sharp, 
and silvery, the whole is a bed 
of silver sprinkled with bright- 
hued flowers. To reach this 
brilliancy with mere pigment is no easy task. I tried 
painting upon Chinese white, but produced mud. In 
these courtyard scenes colour is dragged in wholesale. 
It hangs from out of every window, appears on the 
shutters in emerald green, beautifies a whitewashed 
wall with clumps of yellow and 




orange. 

The women, too, made fine 
patches of colour; but so 
queenly was their carriage and 
so dignified their manners that, 
although they voluntarily sat 
for me, it seemed to me both 
a sacrilege and an insult to offer 
them a reward. I was desper- 
ately shy, and managed, as I 
stole out of the yard under the 
fire of their handsome laughing 

124 



n 



A^=^^ 










ife.. w 



Spain 




eyes, to lay a small pile of 
silver for each duchess on 
the centre pump. Afterwards 
I learnt that they would have 
been quite satisfied with a 
penny, but I could never 
have brought myself to 
offer it. 

It was in one of these 
^ courtyards that I met a 

Spanish artist, also painting. " Come with me to my 
home," he cried at once, smiling and bowing delight- 
edly. His manners were so charming and so courteous 
that I accepted, and followed him into a magnificently 
decorated studio. The place was filled with Japanese 
ivories, cloisonne and satsuma. I expressed my admi- 
ration for some of the 
finest pieces. "Take 
them," cried my generous 
host. Overcome with joy, 
I thanked him warmly for 
this magnificent gift, for I 
was then in the throes of 
a mania for collecting 
Japanese curios. What a 
superb country is this 
Spain, thought I, how ^: 
generous, how open- V 
hearted are her people ! 
He had given me too 

125 




World Pictures 



ni H 




much though, and I felt that I must admire nothing 
more. But, determined to strip his studio, this gener- 
ous Spaniard followed my eyes whenever they alighted 
on any especially beautiful objects, chairs, pictures, 
jewelry, everything he possessed, 
and he presented them to me with 
many compliments. By the time 
that I turned to go he had bestowed 
such an enormous number of gifts 
on me that I began to meditate. 
Like a flash, I remembered hearing 
a story of a Britisher who had had 
presents showered upon him by a 
Spanish gentleman, but on wrap- 
ping them up into a parcel and 
preparing to depart, he had re- 
ceived a bullet in his brain from 
126 




Spain 




the amiable foreigner. Such is the custom of the 
country. Therefore I accepted a small picture from 
my new friend, and sent him one in return that same 
afternoon. One cannot be too particular in these 
matters. 

Dear, stately, courteous Spain, how 
I love her southern colouring, her rich 
sonorous language ! Idle, apathetic, 
half asleep, she is picturesque in her 
decay. What romances and legen- 
dary stories one weaves around Spain 
as a child ! Don Quixote, Sancho 
Panza, all surely lived. In Madrid 
how delightful it must be, thinks the 
girl, to be serenaded, like Juliet, by 
a guitar underneath one's window, 

127 




World Pictures 




# 



and to throw a rose to the 
handsome troubadour be- 
neath as a reward for his 
song. In Toledo how 
thrilling, thinks the school- 
boy, to see bold men in 
armour dashing about the 
streets on horseback with 
drawn swords of Toledo 
steel flashing beneath their 
velvet cloaks ; and to see 
duels, tournaments, bull- 
fights, taking place every day just as common oc- 
currences. 

My preconceived ideas of Spain were not entirely 
disillusioned. At all events my experiences in To- 
ledo, the centre of heroic romance, were by no means 
devoid of excitement, and, in a way, of tragedy. To 
begin with, I arrived there at 
midnight, and was bumped 
all over the city in a little 
cart down twisting alleys 
with tall grey walls on either 
side, over huge cobble- 
stones, and there was never 
a sign of life or habitation 
anywhere. We drew up at 
length before a little flat- 
roofed house, my hotel. 
The proprietor, a ruffianly- 

128 




SEVILLE, SPAIN 



Spain 




looking man, spoke not a 
word of English, and as my 
knowledge of his language 
was nil, our intercourse was 
carried on by means of pan- 
tomime. With much diffi- 
culty he at length understood 
that I required a bedroom 
and some supper. He led 
me up innumerable stair- 
ways and intricate passages 
and left me with scant cere- 
mony in a room which to 
my consternation I discovered was full of nothing but 
washing-stands. There were at least thirty-three of 
them. Granted that this article of furniture is cer- 
tainly very useful, since one must wash, still, when 
there is no bed, no chair, no dressing-table, no car- 
pet, nothing but washing-stands, one vaguely wonders 

how one is going to spend the 
night. 

After this dispiriting survey, 
I found my way to the dining- 
room by much diligent search. 
There I was ushered to my seat 
by a most ferocious-looking 
waiter, who glared at me in a 
very bloodthirsty manner. He 
flicked his serviette viciously 
about my face, rattled the plates, 
i2g 




World Pictures 



and dashed off to get my meal. Returning with a 
basin of soup he set it down with a bang before 
me, but no sooner had I laid my spoon down for 
an instant than he snatched it away, sat down to 
the table, and wolfishly swallowed the lot himself 
before my ^^^^^^ eyes. I was 

frightfully hun- ^^^^^^^^^ S^Yj ^^* so 
murderous was '""^^^^^^^^^M ^^^ aspect that 
I dared not /^^^^^^^WJ utter a word of 
complaint, and V % ^^^^^P patiently stifled 
my feelings, \^ J^^\ waiting in 

silence for the /^^'^**x::^-^^N ^^^^t course. 

Presently he j/f / ^^^v#J;\ brought a kind 
of small bird, /n , ^fff ///\ \ and pressing 
his oily fingers /7 ' /yr/ / ^ down upon the 

table, he stared / /{] ^ iV hungrily at 

me while I ate ' it. His face 

twitched, and his eyes blinked, and every mouthful I 
swallowed seemed to give him positive pain. At last 
I was compelled to lay down my knife and fork and 
wait until he should withdraw his face. In an in- 
stant he had dragged the bird by one leg from my 
plate, devoured it as he stood there, bones and all. 
I never knew from that day to this what the food 
at that Spanish hotel was like, for I never got an 
opportunity. I do not remember whether I spent 
the night in a basin or in a jug ; I fancy it must 
have been a combination of the two. 



130 



MOROCCO 




TANGIER, MOROCCO 




MOROCCO 



Had Tennyson's enchanted heroine, who sat serenely 
alone in her grey tower watching the many-coloured 
stream of humanity drift over the surface of her mir- 
ror, riding down to Camelot under the blue sky, 
through the golden grain, had the fairy lady but been 
a painter, very simple, true, and dainty, no doubt, 
her " notes " would have been. To paint Tangier, 
that marvellous city to which three continents lend 
whatever is most fantastic, gor- 
geous, and grotesque, one would 
need such a clear and impartial 
mirror as that of the Lady of 
Shalott's to be one's guide in 
choice of subjects. 

It is a weird, unreal world, this 
into which one has strayed. It is 
easier to believe that that old Arab, 

133 




World Pictures 

who emerges from the shade of a narrow street, sedate, 
imperturbable of aspect as the mule he rides on, has 
come straight from the pages of the "Arabian Nights " 
than that he is an ordinary mortal, bent on some 
worldly twentieth-century business, and that he is 




probably en route for the market. His profile, 
like a finely moulded mask of bronze, is sharply de- 
fined for an instant against the dazzling white of a 
sunlit wall, and then he is gone, while a score of other 
figures, as surprising as he, come and go in a bewil- 
dering dream of colour and quaint form. How mag- 
nificent are the types ! Can it be that these figures 
are unconscious themselves of their grand poses, and 
the swinging grace of their movements ? Even the 
round-headed little urchins playing in the dust by 

134 



Morocco 

the roadside are fine, with their drollery of feature and 
a few scanty rags. 

The dominant quality of the scenes is their blaze 
and breadth of light, and light so penetrating that 
all colours are harmonised and all crude;iess swal- 




:l:^;<#i^"v?^. 4^^^^'-^' '^^.^ 



^' 'CS 



,. ^/. 



lowed up. It is the radiance of the African sun which 
brings together such exquisite combinations of colour 
as are to be seen at every turn. Here is a sunlit yard, 
with a space of dusky foreground leading up to a little 
group of men and animals, the most strongly accen- 
tuated details being a mule's pointed ears ; the shadow 
under a wooden shed is sharply crossed by a slender 
pole in light, while in the background are some arched 
gateways delicately defined. Under the awning of a 
little shop there is a glimmer of bright-coloured stuffs 
and figures in the shade. A slipper of yellow leather 

135 



World Pictures 




^s^ 



and a bare sinewy ankle above it come prominently 
into the light. One notes it down quickly as an at- 
tractive detail, with the pretty little shadow of the 
slipper on the ground. Almost before one has time 
to sketch it, the owner of the foot, a dusky figure just 
.before lost in the mass of shadow beneath the low, 
dark archway, steps suddenly forward into the sunny 
street. The unexpected flash of light crossing the 
gateway is almost painful in its brilliancy. 

To try after effects of sunlight in Tangier is at once 
the most fascinating and most hope- 
less problem of the painter, who has 
but his colour box of dull pigment to 
compete against nature and her tones 
of fire. What can one do with a sky 
which shows deep and purple blue, 
but is in reality so light that the 
whitest paper in shadow is dark 
beside it ? 

Much has been done in this city, 
which the brilliant but somewhat 
136 





S: 



^ 



#^ 



STREET SCENE IN 1' A N G I E R S 



Morocco 



-'A 



j\^j ': ij 1(71]. Ml hrfffrirf}:^]''— '-"" -J — --_• 




^^tm'-:^'^^mmSi^^^ e-v 



theatrical painters of the French and Spanish schools 
have in a measure made their own, but a day spent 
in wandering through its streets and courts is enough 
to show how much there still remains to be done 
in the way of fresh and artistic impressions. It is 
strange, after a few hours' journey, to find oneself trans- 
ported from modern Gibraltar with its fortresses and 
its soldiers into the ancient Moorish town of Tangier 
where grand old Orientals drift about 
with all the dignity of their ancestors, 
where the sun blazes down with true 
Oriental brilliancy, bleaching every- 
thing it falls upon with the intensity 
of its rays. The houses are white, 
the walls are white, and even the 
background is white, so that every 
little splash of colour shows out with M\ 
tenfold distinctness and force. It is "^ 
as if you were to mount a brilliantly 

137 








World Pictures 




painted water-colour drawing upon a white What- 
man's mount where the colours obtain an added value, 
whereas were you to substitute brown for white half 
their brilliancy would be lost. 

Grand, glorious sun, harmoniser and purifier, what 
would Morocco do without you, I should like to 
know ? When piles of refuse are thrown out of every 
house in a long street, if the sun were not in atten- 
dance waiting to act as dustman, how long would the 
people live ? They would die off like flies within 
a day. When a man falls Into the river, or goes 
out in a shower of rain he waits for the sun to come 
out and dry his garments, or rather his garment, for 
the Moor usually wears but one long white robe. 

Walking is a matter of some difficulty in Tangier as 
the streets are one mass of holes and boulders, but an 

138 



A COURTYARD, MOROCCO. 



Morocco 



€iJ" 









artist should be oblivious to 
such minor obstacles as these. 
If so, and if he can become in- 
different to odours unsavoury" 
and sounds unharmonious, he 
will be thrice blest, for there 
surely never was a city so 
choked full of subjects and 
little glowing pictures as Tan- 
gier. The market scenes are 
perhaps finest of all, crowded as they are with de- 
tail ; camels, horses, and mules are accompanied by 
their handsome owners with features as finely moulded 
as those of any Greek statue ; piles of fruit are kept 
by women muffled in shapeless garments; and red- 











139 



World Pictures 

brown oxen are standing about in the sunny square. 
The Moor's few efforts towards cleanliness seem to 
be centred on the outside of his house, which he 
takes pains to keep snow-white. Continually one 
may see the men and children of a family white- 
washing their walls with little lumps of tow in order 
to preserve the pristine purity. 




140 



TURKEY 







/' ---^^ 






|^,,jr\=^Si®igvt 






MOSQUE OF SAINT SOPHIA, CONSTANTINOPLE 




TURKEY 



When one thinks of Turkey, one's thoughts instinc- 
tively fly to Constantinople and perhaps not without 
reason, for after all the " Sick Man's City" may be said 
to be the centre round which both Turkish and Eng- 
lish interests are chiefly focussed. Was there ever 
such a city, so gay, so full of colour, so strangely new, 
even to the travelled eye of an artist ? Turkey is a 
place that one has always dreamed about ; when a 
child, one remembers it above all others as being a 
far-away place, the home of Turkish delight, of Ali 
Baba and the Forty Thieves, of long curved daggers 
and red fez caps, and also as being remarkably adaptable 
for puns and charades. When grown up, one regards 
Constantinople as a much overrated place, impover- 
ished and tawdry, and its inhabitants as opium-eating 
knaves ; yet it is interesting because of its critical con- 

143 



World Pictures 

dition, and because of the poor, sickly, frightened 
Sultan who lives there. When one actually visits 
Constantinople, all political questions and preconceived 
ideas, childish and mature, lose themselves in wonder 
and admiration. 

A glittering white city rises out of a sea of bright- 
est amethyst and it is honeycombed with miles upon 
miles of square windows ; there are occasional grey, 







curved domes topped with golden crescents, gaily 
striped mosques and hundreds of slender snow-white 
minarets tinged with palest rose from the sunrise 
sky, — such is the picture of Constantinople from the 
sea of Marmora. When, however, one comes to dive 
into the streets and byways of this wondrous fairy 
city, the first glorious impression fades somewhat. 
Other senses besides that of vision are brought into 
play and tickled not so agreeably. One must seek 
nothing else save the picturesque in Constantinople, and 

144 



Turkey 




keeping that in view one will be more than satisfied ; 
if one makes use of one's nose and ears, or thinks of 
bodily comfort, by the end of the day one will be 
thoroughly discouraged and unhappy. The smells 
are offensive, the rough streets hurtful, the heat is 
oppressive, and the dirt repellent. But keep the 
mind nobly fixed upon the search of the picturesque, 
as upon a star in the firmament, heeding not the 
odours, or the streets, or the heat, looking upon all 
dirt as tone, and the artist's soul will revel and rejoice 
in the myriads of pictures that surround and almost 
overwhelm it with their wealth of beauty. 

There are those magnificent fountains which almost 




145 



World Pictures 

invariably form the principal feature of any scene in 
the city. Wherever they are situated, by the river 
side or in the centre of some market place, or under 
the shadow of a noble mosque, they are always crowded 
with beggars, street vendors, children, dogs, pigeons — 
in fact all the refuse of the Constantinople streets. 
Old turbaned Turks squat serenely beneath wide- 
spread, vivid green umbrellas, selling highly coloured 
dainties into the nature of which one does not care to 
inquire — probably rice, blanc-mange, and maize-cakes. 
Then there are vermicelli makers, lemonade and sher- 
bet sellers, letter writers, innumerable trades of all 
kinds are carried on in the shadow of the street foun- 
tain. Every one comes here for water, both rich and 
poor, soldiers and civilians, Armenians and Turks, 




146 



SCUTARI, TURKEY 



Turk( 



■y 




men in fact of every nationality and calling. There 
are pictures to be seen at every one of these fountains. 
That one near the mosque of St. Sophia swarms with 
pigeons; thousands and thousands of them push and 
flutter around, smothering the fountain and the court- 
yard with their jewel-like plumage of purple, green, 
and grey. Another is a picture in itself, a veritable 
Sultan's palace in miniature with domes, marble pillars, 
flights of steps, gratings and doorways. It possesses 
a gate wrought in bronze of the most fairy-like struc- 
ture, in its delicacy almost resembling lacework. There 
are inscriptions and poems in green and gold — in fact 
it is more like a temple than a fountain, a temple 
erected to some water sprite. 

The streets of Constantinople were my delight. 
They literally, teemed with colour ; the wares were 

147 



World Pictures 



bright, the sellers were bright, the buyers were bright, 
and the sun shone down brightly — alas ! too brightly, 
like a ball of fire — upon all. Water carriers, oil car- 
riers, soldiers, policemen, women muffled to the chin in 
mummy-like robes, black slaves, Turkish gentlemen 








dressed in black European clothes with fezzes ranging 
from new crimson colour to weather-beaten lobster 
shade, thronged the dark narrow streets, or rather 
lanes. On either side were the regular Turkish shops, 
little low cupboards with slanting slabs on which the 
bath towels, slippers, daggers, silk goods, and the 
usual rubbishing stock in trade were displayed. Those 
most admirable liars and cheats, the salesmen, sat 
cross-legged, smoking and drinking coffee as though 



Turkey 

business were the very furthest thought from their 
majestic minds. Then there are streets filled with 
men of a totally different stamp, there are the workers, 
patient and industrious. Gold beaters, carpenters, 
jewellers, pipe-makers, fez-makers, tinkers, tailors, 
and candlestick-makers, all hard at work. Here I 
spent most of my time, for the atmosphere of the 
hammer and anvil were more congenial to my mind, 
than the close-scented air of the bazaars. 



149 



GREECE 





fMiO'fc 



^■U-<y 
















td 



n?ir 









U 






t - 




TOWER OF THE WINDS, ATHENS 







^ >^'=''^-_ 






GREECE 



Greece is practically virgin soil, for no one that has 
been to Athens, Corinth, Thebes, or any of these 
ancient places seems to be capable of telling anything 
about them. They have seen them, and that is nearly 
all the information one can gain. Books give one 
hardly any tangible idea of the country or the people, 
and altogether it is with a mind as clean and blank as a 
slate, and absolutely devoid of any preconceived ideas, 
that one first visits Greece. One has not even seen 
pictures or photographs of the place, all one can think 
of is ancient Greece. From that standpoint it is, of 
course, sadly disappointing. 

The blank look on the faces of some of the expec- 
tant tourists when they reach Athens is pathetic, and 
sometimes amusing. At first there is deep silence, no 
one utters a word : Athens is totally different from 
what every one expected, yet they are not going to 

153 



World Pictures 

betray their ignorance by word or look. But the reality 
is naturally a great blow to them, and the greatest shock 
of all is the scantiness of the ruins. Many of these 
tourists have been through Mexico, which abounds in 
ancient fortresses and churches, yet here in Athens 
there is scarcely anything of the kind to be seen. Then 











again, among the first things they look for are fine 
antique figures in the streets. They search in vain 
for living Venuses resembling that of Milo and for 
Dianas in all sorts of out-of-the-way places, even among 
the post-office girls, and the young women selling socks 
in drapers' shops. They have all studied in the 
antique room at South Kensington, working labori- 
ously for weeks on end upon black sooty drawings 
from the Antinous or Discobolus, they all know 
what a fine Grecian profile should be like, and when 

154 



Greece 

the crushing absence of such outlines in the streets of 
modern Greece is at length brought home to them, they 
are all feverishly anxious to illustrate to one another 
what is really meant by classic line ; and one sees these 
plain people turning sideways so that their profiles may 







be clearly outlined against the sky, exhibiting perfect 
abominations in the way of turned-up noses, shelving 
foreheads, pointed heads, and receding chins. They 
really want cooling medicine, these poor dear people in 
Greece ; in fact, I should insist upon Eno's fruit salt 
being included in their outfit for the journey. I am 
sure if their relations at home could see them poring 
over books of ancient Greece, and pegging away for 
dear life, as though they had not a moment to lose, at 
the " ancient tongue" which they will insist upon using 

155 



World Pictures 







V — if"-. 



to every one they come across oblivious of snubs, they 
would disown them at once as hopeless lunatics. Their 
naive questions about art are also most quaint. One 
man I met fully expected to come across oil pictures in 
gold frames down among the ruins! These people 
will give you the benefit of all sorts of newly acquired 
information as to frescoes and tempera, the words roll- 
ing glibly off their tongues with the greatest gusto. 
That they make the best of the situation, truly, nobly 
and heroically, it must be admitted, but modern Greece 
is a very heavy blow to their sensitive, art-loving souls. 







156 



Greece 

However, they are consoled by quoting pages of 
classical poetry and sketching one another's profiles 
against the Acropolis at sunset. 

Seriously, to enjoy oneself thoroughly, one should 
make a long stay in Greece, wandering dreamily about 
the sites of the famous cities, peopling them once more 




in imagination, cruising amongst the islands where the 
people are living perhaps the purest and most simple 
lives of any nation in the world, and where one some- 
times finds groups of truly beautiful Grecian types, 
especially among the young boys. 

One sees many curious garbs in Greece, but perhaps 
the most striking of all are those of the great men's 
servants in Athens. They resemble peacocks as they 

157 



World Pictures 

strut about in stiffly^ starched kilted skirts and bright 
yellow boots, presenting the appearance of something 
between a ballet girl and a Scotchman. Brigandage is 
still carried on to a great extent almost all over the 
country, and in the cities the men will glare fiercely at 
you, greatly preferring to get money out of you by 
force and robbery rather than by cringing. 




^iK 







In Athens there is an almost inexhaustible supply 
of white marble from the quarries on Pentelicus, not 
far away, and the people make use of these advantages 
to a very great extent. But perhaps, after all, it is not 
a very great advantage, for the glare of the brilliant 
white marble houses, and the suffocating marble dust 
lying thick upon the roads, is almost too much for 
any one to bear. One's eyes positively ache to-day in 
modern Greece, when closely inspecting the statues, 

158 



A GARDEN, ATHENS, GREECE 



Greece 








the palaces, and the architecture ; and one can quite 
beHeve that such a nation of artists as the ancient 
Greeks could never have stood this cruel whiteness in 
such a clear atmosphere, and that they must have 
modified its brilliancy in some way by staining the 
marble. It sounds like vandalism to talk of staining 
white statues, and so it would be if carried as far as 
an attempt to stain, 
for instance, the El- 
gin Marbles. We 
are not as highly 
cultured in matters 
of art as the ancient 
Greeks, and we can- 
not attempt to stain 
or paint any relief 
work without de- 
grading it. We do 
not seem to have 




World Pictures 



■MiJl^mr^::^ 










r-'-T^^ '■- ' " .;tfl«i. 



sufficient artistic sense to accomplish it successfully, 
and other than in a clumsy and somewhat vulgar way. 
The Japanese successfully paint and gild their gro- 
tesquely carved wooden gods and Buddhas, and their 
small representations of Daimios, because they make 
pretence of realism. If one attempts to stain a marble 
statue, as some of the modern French school have 
done;, so as to suggest realism, changing the pure, 
cold lips to vermilion, and the blank eyes to blue 
orbs, one invariably ends in creating nothing else 
than a Madame Tussaud's waxwork. This extremely 
delicate task must be done purely from the decorative 
standpoint, as it was done by the ancient Greeks. 
What desecration to colour the Elgin Marbles ! It 
would be just as terrible and almost as impossible as 
it would be to try to complete the missing arms of 
the Venus of Milo. Almost every sculptor in the 
world has had a try at this task, but no man has 

i6o 



Greece 

succeeded in producing anything but an absolute 
figure of fun. 

There is perhaps no scene in all Greece that im- 
presses one with such a deep sense of awe and majesty, 
that brings back such a mighty flood of sacred mem- 
ories, as that to be witnessed when standing amid the 
ruins of the Acropolis on a moonlight night. Athens 
lies around one, sleeping beneath the stars, while the 
Parthenon, grey and classic, with its impenetrable 
black shadows, and its pillars silvered by a full moon, 
is outlined in sharpest relief against the purple night. 
An almost unearthly silence hangs over all. Such a 
scene as this cannot easily be forgotten, nor can it fail 
to provide food for serious and sacred thoughts, even 
to the most frivolous and flippant among us. 




i6i 



PALESTINE 

















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COURTYARD IN DAMASCUS 




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PALESTINE 



Damascus is not considered one of the cities of the 
Holy Land, yet who that has seen the city can resist 
including her among them ? Of all Eastern cities she 
is the most picturesque, and one of the most holy. 
Almost everything possible has been said, sung, or 
written of Damascus. Travellers rave over her, poets 
laud her to the skies, describing her as " the Pearl of 
the Desert," or " a priceless diamond set round with 
emeralds." The Damascenes firmly believe their city 
to be a terrestrial reflection of Heaven, her gardens 
those of Eden, and her rivers the two that watered 
Adam's paradise. Even the prophet Mahomet him- 
self, when looking down upon Damascus for the first 
time, was so struck with her beauty, that he turned 
away and refused to enter her gates, making the long 
famous remark, that as man could enter only one 
paradise, he chose the one above. 

The train journey from Beyrout to Damascus was 
for the most part long and tedious. The day was 

165 



World Pictures 

broiling hot, the carriage filled with natives and their 
babies, and we wound up and around the mountains 
at a snail's pace for hours and hours. Nearing Damas- 
cus the scenery became flatter and more interesting. 
We passed gardens luxurious with fruit, and forest 
trees, — poplar, palm, walnut, citron, pomegranate, and 
fig ; past vast lonely plains where great cities probably 
once flourished, but inhabited now by jet-black goats 











that looked like overgrown poodles, their long hair 
smothering legs and eyes with a thick shroud. Swarthy- 
complexioned, black-bearded shepherds walked in 
front, playing weird music upon a pipe. These last 
delighted me, they confirmed my juvenile ideas of 
shepherds in the Bible so thoroughly, dressed as they 
were in long, loose garments of brown, striped with 
bufi^, and with white cloths on their heads, wound 
round with coils of tightly bound goat's hair. 

Damascus itself, the oldest city in the world, soon 
lay before us, — "a long white oasis in a mass of 

i66 



THE HOUSE OF ANANIAS, DAMASCUS, HOLY LAND. 



Palestine 

green." It can be described in no other way. I do 
not agree with some writers that Mahomet did a wise 
thing when he refrained from entering the walls of 
Damascus. If they but had their chance over again, 
they would camp upon Mahomet's hill, say these 
writers, feast their eyes on the distant city, and then 






smm Mmi L 








mm 



depart. For myself, I think that if Mahomet was 
anything of an artist, with an eye for colour and the 
picturesque, he missed a great deal in not seeing 
the streets and houses, market places and bazaars of 
the city. The streets, it is true, are narrow, crooked, 
and filthy, while high houses and mud walls hide the 
magnificent gardens without. Yet they act only as 
a background of grey monotone upon which the 

167 



World Pictures 




sparkling, vivacious, human picture is portrayed and 
silhouetted, all the more clearly for the contrast. 

This is an Eastern city more rich and prosperous 
than any I have yet seen. It is thronged to over- 
flowing with people. Caravans, camels, and donkeys, 
laden with merchandise from Bagdad and from Mecca, 
rich men's carriages, and the swarm of foot-passengers 
make walking or driving difficult in the narrow streets. 
No disappointing European costumes are here ; every 
one dresses in the beautiful flowing garments of the 
East, mostly white with bright-coloured turbans and 
sashes. Real old biblical patriarchs with long grey 
beards sit smoking their chibouks, and money-changers 
and scribes drive a thriving trade at the street corners. 
The houses, though ugly in the extreme on the out- 
side with their tawny square-topped roofs and mud 

i68 



Palestine 

walls, disclose perfect visions of Eastern beauty when 
once the doorway is passed. You find yourself in a 
many-coloured marble-mosaic courtyard with the blue 
dome of the sky above for a roof; a marble fountain, 
half covered with creepers and flowers, and tossing 
silver sprays high into the air, is in the centre, while 
all around are alcoves in the walls decorated most gor- 
geously and furnished with divans and cushions, where 
the women recline, smoking and chatting and looking 
out upon the fountain. We were taken to see the 
reputed houses of Ananias and Judas, the tomb of 
Mahomet's children, Naaman's ancient dwelling place, 
where ghastly lepers mostly congregate, and other 
interesting spots. 

But we must pass on to Jerusalem, — the holiest 
city on earth. One can get there from Jaffa, either 
by carriage or train. I went once by train with some 




World Pictures 



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"'^ ^m>vW 



ladies, who, as we were winding slowly up a hillside, 
caught sight of some lilies of the field growing near 
by. Nothing would satisfy them but picking some. 
The engineer very obligingly stopped the train for us, 
and we got out, guard and all, and gathered great 
bunches of these lilies, which were more strictly pink 
anemones. On another occasion I made the journey 
by carriage, starting at two in the afternoon and arriv- 
ing at twelve o'clock at night. It seemed as though 
we should never reach the Holy City. Sunlight 
changed to moonlight, we passed village after village, 
and still no Jerusalem came in sight. At Ramah and 




170 



ON THE ROAD TO BETHLEHEM 



Palestine 



Beroth we stopped to rest the horses and drink 
coffee. In a light as clear as day we could see hordes 
of camels and goats resting with their attendants on a 
dusty roadside. A band of real Bedouins rode up 
on gaily decorated horses, and leaped off before the 







animals had stopped. Each man unstrapped from 
his saddle a small Turkish rug, spread it upon the 
ground and began to pray, bowing slowly backwards 
and forwards towards the East. 

After many false alarms we eventually reached 
Jerusalem. Nothing much was to be seen that night. 
We wound up a very ordinary street into a still more 
ordinary American hotel, and that was all. After 
staying a week in Jerusalem I came to the conclu- 

171 



World Pictures 

sion that it was no more than a little old grey town, 
and not so very old either, save for Saladin the 
Magnificent's ancient red wall which surrounds it. 
Walking through Jerusalem is like walking through 
the pages of the Bible. An old woman comes riding 
along on a donkey, and a young man steps forward to 




greet her dressed in the Bedouin Arab costume, — a 
robe that differs not one particle from that which 
Abraham wore. The old woman, bending forward, 
salutes him on the forehead, and one can hear those 
two superb Arab voices mingled together in greeting, 
although the language is unintelligible. 

The streets of Jerusalem are full of dirt and super- 
stition. There are bazaars arched over and shaded, 
where embroiderers, tinsmiths, and shoemakers con- 

172 



'm-^ 




JERUSALEM, HOLY LAND. 



Palestine 




gregate, but they lack the brilliancy and busy move- 
ment which characterises most Oriental bazaars. No 
carriages or camels can pass through the narrow streets 
or lanes, but only troops of donkeys, laden with 
immense loads of garden produce. Many places of 
interest are pointed out in the city, among them the 
house of the rich man Dives, who never existed save 
in a parable, and the very stones on which our Lord 
stood while being judged ; they could not have been 
less than forty feet below. 

I went to the wailing place of the Jews, where they 
congregate every Friday to lament over the scattering 
of their nation. I saw an old Jew, dressed in a black 
robe, kneel down and press his head against the huge 







•^^ir/ 



^73 



World Pictures 



stones, weeping real tears over them. He was genuinely 
distressed, and it made one feel quite miserable to 
watch him as he watered the stones of Solomon with 
his tears. I went also, of course, to the church of the 
Holy Sepulchre, which should be the most interesting 
church in all Christendom. Noisiness, confusion, and 
gorgeousness were its characteristics. Men of all 
nationalities and sects worshipped at their separate 
















altars, and the babel of voices in that sacred place was 
almost deafening. For peace, deep and beautiful, you 
must go, not to any Christian church, but to the 
Mosque of Omar with its splendid " dim, religious 
light." 

Perhaps there is no spot in the Holy Land which 
is so absolutely authentic as the Garden of Geth- 
semane. The very same trees under which our 
Lord prayed on that last terrible night are said to 
exist to this day. You are allowed to walk round 

174 



MOSQUE OF OMAR JERUSALEM 



Palestine 




'-—ir- 












- ( ,^ •.-^- 



the paths, and on leaving, a venerable old monk pre- 
sents you with some olive branches. The pool of 
Bethesda is exactly what one imagines it must have 
been when the angel came to trouble the water, 
so different from the pool of Siloam, which is filthy 
in the extreme. The field of blood is shown to 
you, and the very tree upon which Judas is a 
supposed to have hanged himself, also the fe 



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World Pictures 



Tyropoean Valley, the 
Mount of Olives, the tomb 
of Absalom, and many 
other sacred and interest- 
ing spots. 

There are many dan- 
gers, however, to be 
avoided whilst sight-seeing 
in the Holy City. Fierce 
dogs descended from those 
amiable animals that 
^ • "" chased Jezebel swarm out- 

side the city walls ; and as they are not needed to 
chase the sheep, they chase the people for sport, 
and viciously too. Then the place abounds with 
slippery steps down which one invariably toboggans ; 
the narrow streets are full of baby donkeys, which push 
and jolt you unmercifully, and you have to keep 
a sharp lookout for the bayonets of Turkish soldiers 





176 



MOUNT OF OLIVES, HOLY LAND 



Palestine 




which protrude unpleasantly near. The "growlers," 
too, are a source of great inconvenience to portly- 
travellers in the Holy Land, as sometimes the floor 
gives way, and you run round Jerusalem with the 
cab. These are but minor drawbacks, however, to 
a city which is at once the most pathetic and most 
interesting in the world. Even the most flippant 
of tourists cannot but be impressed with the sacred- 
ness and grand solemnity of the place. Their 
cockney tones become unconsciously modulated to 




177 



World Pictures 

awed whispers whilst walking in the Garden of 
Gethsemane, or when overlooking the Holy City. 
A strange poetical sadness pervades it which one 
can neither account for nor ignore. You feel at once 
that here in very truth is the scene of the divine 
tragedy. 








I remember once standing on the roof of a house 
in Jerusalem, looking down upon the city stretched 
round about my feet, every grey-white house, each 
little window, shining in the silver sun. The clouds 
overhead hung black and threatening, but the sun 
illumined the city, turning everything to a most 
heavenly silver, as though Nature herself must needs 
favour it. Jerusalem looked like a lovely little silver 
model of a town and it produced an effect upon 
me that I shall never forget. The tomb of Rachel 
is the spot where tourists from Brixton or elsewhere 
congregate in abundance. It is a beautiful spot over- 
lookinPf the corn-fields where Boaz met Ruth, and 
where the shepherds kept their flocks by night. 

178 



BETHLEHEM 



Palestine 

The imagination lingers there as much as on any 
place on earth. There is a well on the road to 
Bethlehem where David spilled upon the ground the 
water that three armed men brought him, rather 
than drink the price of blood. A pretty tradition 
tells how at this very same well, one of the wise 
men, having lost sight of the guiding star, stopped 
to give his horse drink, and as he did so, caught 




sight of its silver reflection glistening in the water, 
and set out on the right roaa to Bethlehem once 
more. 

The church of the Nativity looks more like an 
old mediaeval fort than anything else. The door 
is so low that every one, whether Christian or heathen, 
is forced to make an obeisance, or else be hit on 
the head. I saw that the place glistened with jewels, 
but that is about all, for I was almost torn to pieces 
directly I entced by guides, drivers, and salesmen, 
each one shouting in a shrill, high-pitched voice 

179 



World Pictures 

that he wanted to take me down to see the manger 
where Christ was born. In the end I refused to go, 
so disgusted was I with the haranguing, swarming, 
noisome pack of people. How can one think in 
such a place as this ! And so it is wherever you 
go in Palestine. The more holy and sacred the 
spot, the more revolting and noisy are the crowding 
beggars and pedlars. Hallowed Bethlehem is not 
by any means all that one could desire. 



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EGYPT 




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EGYPT 



When I say that it was through a Sphinx at the British 
Museum that I decided on visiting Egypt, I may be 
accused of joking ; but the statement is literally true. 
It came about in this way. I was at a big dinner- 
party and felt, as one is apt to do at the end of a Lon- 
don season, the cynicism, the affectation, the insincerity 
of it all, and the absence of disinterested motives, 
with decency almost hidden. The feeling impressed 
me so strongly that I could not shake it off the next 
day. So I strolled into the British Museum, and 
looking listlessly about came upon a small carved head 
of a Sphinx, which attracted me strongly. The more 
I studied it — and I sat there for some hours — the 
more I felt how clean and simple it was. It seemed 
to inspire a longing to go back to a simpler civilisation 
of thousands of years ago. Now, as the travellers 
agree, the life of people in Egypt to-day is practi- 

183 



World Pictures 

cally unchanged, and then and there I made up my 
mind to go to Egypt. 

My motive may possibly have been to study its 
archaeological past, but when I reached Cairo I found 
that the Egypt of to-day was overmastering in its in- 
terest. There the old Bible history seemed alive again 








before my eyes. Yet it was not so much its picturesque 
incident as its colour that fascinated me, not so much 
the Egypt of history, but modern Egypt, with its 
bazaar and home-life in all its vividness and full 
rich colouring. Every bazaar, every little shop, was 
in itself a picture full of dazzling colour, almost 
like a flower, the strongest and most brilliant colours 
in juxtaposition, yet all in complete harmony. In 
Japan, in Burma, in the Spain of the Moors, I 
found nothing so rich in tone as in Cairo. There 
was an orange shop that I remember especially, a 

184 



Egypt 

yellow wall with a hole in it. Dilapidated wood- 
work of a purple hue surrounded that hole, and in 
its depths the eye gradually discovered its pictur- 
esque wares set out for sale. A beggar — an old 
man in a lemon-coloured gown, picked out in black 
— stood close to the wall. The rich mixture of 




orange and purple and lemon-yellow can hardly be 
described. There are many people who might im- 
agine that such colours could not go well together : 
they have n't seen that street. No doubt it is the 
brilliant sunshine that acts as a universal harmoniser 
in bringing all these vivid colours together. Many 
people may tell me that I exaggerated the colouring 
of Cairo, and, if so, their criticism will make me 
proud. For at the time I was working there, — in 
the shade, of course, — the brightest pigments on 

i8s 



World Pictures 




my palette appeared dull and mud- 
coloured by the side of Nature in 
sunlight. A cheap way out of the 
difficulty was to use white as a har- 
moniser — that is, by making the col- 
ours greyer, and nearer each other 
— but for me the reign of white was 
over. To get a vivid green with even 
a taint of white is quite impossible. 
The hopelessness of trying to paint 
with a mixed palette where one has 
to fish for the right tone oppressed me. 
a clean picture of a clear, sunlit scene, one must 
have a clean palette. It is n't easy to make my 
meaning understood — but Egypt revolutionised my 
ideas of work. Then, I despaired of distantly ap- 
proaching the brightness of Egypt ; now, if I am 
accused of exaggerating it, it will give me pleasure. 
There is no living art in Egypt, but a dead art lives 
unconsciously. The people are 
biblical and dignified in appear- 
ance and devoid of vulgar curi- 
osity ; at least they appeared so 
to me. The old men were very 
handsome, and had wonderfully 
fine heads. They had rarely 
more than one eye, for the sun 
^and the sand — chiefly the sand 
I fancy — afi^ects the sight. 
Then the native doctors clap on 
i86 




i 



•*'»Si*r- ' >v i\ 



THE P V R A .AI T D S 




Egypt 

onions, and absolutely poultice the eyes 
out. A man with a remaining eye is a 
lucky mortal. My servant, I recollect, 
had only one. 

Amusing experiences do not fall in 



^^T^ one's way when hard at work, but I re- 



member once being well scared. I had 
told my servant to procure me a num- 
ber of old rags, rags that the sun had 
tinted and softened in colour, brilliant 
still, but changed and altered. A whole 
street of people tumbled out of doors 
and showered their treasures at my feet. I never saw 
such a sight. But as the owners quarrelled over their 
bargains, my mute admiration was interrupted by a sud- 
den reflection. The cholera ! and at the thought of 
my danger in buying, I hurried out with a sickly hor- 
ror impossible to describe, and fled. My servant in- 
sisted on completing his purchases, but I had lost 
interest somehow, as had the rags their dangerous 
value. 

Grand Cairo, magnificent Cairo, where is her peer ? 
The winding streets teem with people that have scarcely 
changed in appearance or in manners these hundreds 
of years. The same glo- 
rious Eastern life goes 
on before your eyes at 
the present day. Groups 
of natives in the most 
gorgeous robes stand by ^^ 

187 




World Pictures 



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nr^ 



— - ^'j. 



the doors of their houses, in a bazaar where nothing but 
carpets are sold, and so vast, so curious, so dark that 
it might have been built six or seven hundred years 
ago, or even before the Crusader, for all that one can 
tell. Every house is hung with magnificent tapestries 
and carpets. A shaft of sunlight streams through on 
to a rug of vermilion and emerald green, rich as the 
glories of the East, brilliant as the stones on the dress 
of a harem beauty. But the luminous shadows of the 
interior — profound and far-reaching, yet full of sub- 
dued light and colour — are no less striking than the 
humming-bird blues, the rubies and amethysts of the 
draperies in sunlight. One passes coffee-houses where 
Eastern story tellers are seated, surrounded by an ad- 
miring mob of men and children in multi-coloured 
Eastern robes, eagerly listening to wonderful, myste- 




Egypt 

rious stories everywhere as \ 
interesting as Arabian Nights ^ V 
of the olden days ; sweets- 
sellers with their impossible 
dainties ; water-carriers with 
their ancient cry ; baby don- 
keys and their good-natured 
drivers jostling one in the 
narrow streets. 

The finest view of Cairo 
is to be had from way up on the citadel towards the 
end of the day, when the wonderful mediaeval city is 
spread beneath you, wrapt in a golden mist, with the 
long, unbroken line of the desert in the distance, 
purple and splendid, broken only by the misty 
pyramids. Suddenly there is a tremendous roar from 
the citadel. It is the sunset gun. Cairo seems but 
just to have awakened from her midday slumber; 
in the twinkling of an eye the streets are swarming 
with devotees on their way to prayers ; children 
laughing, and camels screaming, while every little 

window of every house is 
transformed into a square of 
burnished gold. Just as 
suddenly the scene is changed 
once more. The sun sets 
behind the hills ; there is a 
' minute or so of the unearthly 
beauty of the after-glow, and 
darkness reigns almost im- 
189 




World Pictures 

mediately, not to be relieved until the golden stars 
come out one by one, and form a glorious canopy 
overhead. 

Cairo of late years has been built over to a very 
great extent, and portions of it do not differ in appear- 




^1 'pia^> 



ance from any ordinary French or Italian town. This 
in some people's minds is considered an improvement, 
but to the artist, or to the scholar, or to the person 
who is really interested in the country for itself, it is 
decidedly a drawback. Now, Luxor and Karnac are 
absolutely different from Cairo in that they are not in 
the slightest degree modernised, except perhaps for the 
presence of one or two hotels. You pass slowly, and 
silently, and dreamily, up the beautiful river Nile until 
one evening, just about sunset, your Diahbeer anchors 
off the ancient temple of Luxor. Here you are in, as 

190 





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FRUIT STALL, EGYPT 



Egypt 

it were, the very cradle of the world's history ; you are 
confronted with all that is most ancient, most mysteri- 
ous, and most beautiful, in the civilisation of the 
world. There is nothing quite so impressive, not even 
Karnac itself, as the temple of Luxor seen at sunset. 




But when you have been to the hotel, after witnessing 
the sunset in the temple of Luxor, and the moon has 
risen, and the stars are shining, and the absolute silence 
of the Egyptian night has fallen over the desert, you 
should take a trip — as most people do — to the mag- 
nificent ruins of Karnac. I think what will strike you 
most, with regard to Karnac, is its immense size. 
Somehow or other, travellers have never told us, and 
books of travel do not seem to have given us any in- 
formation, as to the enormous size of KarnaCi When 

191 



World Pictures 




H"r> 



4 










I was there, two or three years ago, there were upwards 
of three thousand men working every day at these 
wonderful ruins. I do not suppose there is a more 
magnificent sight in the whole world than the temple 
of Karnac by moonlight. 

But we must not linger too long in these temples of 
Luxor and Karnac. One of the great things to do in 
this part of the world is to ride along the valley of 
Thebes from Luxor to the Tombs of the 
Kings. This in itself is an experience 
well worth undergoing. You pass be- 
tween two splendid twin statues of Alexis 
the Great, which sit there looking for 
ever towards the sunrise, and then ride 
slowly along until the great crimson des- 
ert is reached. I use the word " crim- 
son " advisedly, for there is nothing 
more startling, more extraordinary, or 
192 




Egypt 




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— ^77 









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more vivid, than the contrast between the green Nile 
valley of Thebes and the brilliant crimson of the des- 
ert into which you enter from a defile between these 
splendid red rocks. You ride along a little way until 
your guide stops you with the information that you 
have reached the Tombs of the Kings. 

Into these tombs you descend by steps which take 
you sometimes as far as a hundred feet down into the 
ground ; for Heaven alone knows how 
long these wonderful tombs may be. 
Here are paintings that were executed 
over six and seven thousand years ago, 
the colours of which are as bright and 
clear as though they had been painted 
yesterday. It was in one of these tombs 
that I saw the picture of a man carry- 
ing his chibouk over his shoulder, clearly 
proving that the Egyptians had been ac- 

193 




World Pictures 




customed to the use of tobacco, 
and had smoked seven thousand 
years ago. There are several 
other tombs here to be seen, but 
one serves as a sample for the rest. 
Here you get glimpses of the 
life of the Egyptians ; the social 
life, the literary life, the life of 
the hunter, and the life of the 
soldier, exactly as it was lived in 
those far-off days, and can read 
its history in the tombs — as indeed you can all over 
Egypt in the old temples — exactly as you read it in 
the Bible. Frequently vou will find that the inscrip- 
tions on the tombs serve but as verifications of what 
you have been accustomed to read for years and years 
in your own Bible at home. You pass several temples 
on the way home, details concerning which it is un- 
necessary to give, since they are very much the same 
in every part of Egypt. There is one thing, how- 
ever, that is, I think, noticeable everywhere, and that 
is the curious beautiful grey colour of these temples 
as contrasted with the brilliant red of the desert. 

One never-to-be-forgotten day I came across the 
Sphinx. To me she is a woman no matter what 
name she bears. My best friend — the one dear 
and true friend which the world holds for me ; the 
friend who lifted me out of the debasement into 
which I had fallen and revealed to me the reality 
and the power of Art. I have known Her in ages 

194 



A CAIRO STREET 



Egypt 













past, perhaps on the banks of the mysterious Nile, 
perhaps in further ages still. I have loved Her, 
and I shall love Her again in the ages to come. On 
Her forehead is the serpent symbol of wisdom. 
She is of the Sphinx type which died before the 
Romans went to Egypt, — the type which belonged 
to a past when there were gods among men. She has 
the Sphinx conformation of brow and nostril, lip and 
chin, the majestic simplicity, the serenity, and the might ; 
She has the Sphinx smile, sweet, strange, and inscru- 
table — that smile which, but for its unutterable sweet- 
ness and sympathy, would have in its scornful curve 
the cynical contempt of a race of gods for the inex- 
pressible littleness of a race of men. The smile on 
that black face seems to tell of a sublime pity, too. 
She seems to say to me, " I have lived, I have loved, 
I have found Art, and I am Art — Art human and 

195 



World Pictures 



divine, and for all time. I will give you comfort. I 
will give you knowledge. I will give you strength." 
The eyes look at me with wide pupils, and yet, when 
I peer close, there is no definition of pupil ; the lips 
smile at me, — that all-meaning smile. And yet so 
simple are the curves of the mouth that it is as if a 
child had modelled them ; so simple those grand restful 
eyebrows, that a child's finger might have laid them 
on ; so strong and so simple the moulding of the nos- 
tril and of the chin, that it is scarcely possible to think 
of them as having been made by men. Here is 
breadth and simplicity in truth. How is it done ? 
Where is the technique ? There is none. Where is 
the art ? We cannot tell. It baffles us, it is Art itself 
We know only that this thing is, and that it is great. 

Whenever I am lonely now, and dispirited, and 
soiled with the grime of modern London — its social 
and artistic vanities and pettinesses, its meannesses, its 
// hypocrisies, and its sordid cring- 
ings, when the sense of hopeless- 
ness and degradation lies heavily 
upon me, I wander into the Egyp- 
tian Court of the British Museum. 
There I find a friend. It is only 
a little black woman's head, placed 
on a pedestal close by one of the 
windows ; but once more I come 
away soothed, and strengthened, 
and cleansed. 




196 



SOUTH AFRICA 


















.M ' /. \ 



NEAR KIMBERLEY, SOUTH AFRICA 




SOUTH AFRICA 



That part of South Africa which appealed to me most 
was not the gorgeous tropical scenery, so raved over 
by tourists, which has given to Natal the nickname 
of the " garden colony," but strangely enough the 
scenery round about Cape Town. Natal has a certain 
beauty, but it is a beauty that one can see anywhere ; 
it has no distinctive character of its own. The trees 
and foliage there are vivid green, the glossy green of 
the magnolia, the palm, and the camellia mingle in a 
tangle of tropical vegetation. The country is luxurious 
almost to unhealthiness, that is to say. Nature seems to 
have got beyond herself, to be in a state of hysteria, 
she creates freaks, and bursts out in all sorts of unex- 
pected places. For instance, you will often see a tree 
with its fruit or flowers growing from out of the stem. 
There is no reserve about it, and one would so much 
rather it had waited and come out quietly in the proper 
place. 

199 



World Pictures 

If you want to picture to yourself the colouring of 
Natal look at a pineapple. There you have all the 
colours of its rich scenes combined in the one little 
fruit, — yellow, gold, orange, brown, and green. Hold 
up a pineapple out of doors, anywhere you may choose 
in Natal, and you will see the truth of this statement ; 










the fruit becomes so merged into the landscape as to 
be almost indistinguishable from it. 

Most people rushing on their way to Natal and the 
Orange Free State, money-making or pleasure-seeking, 
never glance at Cape Town and its beautiful surround- 
ings. 

To me, that is the most fascinating part of South 
Africa. There is Sea Point, Wynberg, Rondebosch, 
Groote Schoor, Paarl, and a hundred lovely districts I 
could mention, each and every one with landscapes far 
more attractive in their sweeping breadth and cool sil- 
ver colouring than any others to be found in the whole 
extent of South Africa. I have heard the scenery de- 



South Africa 



scribed by unthinking strangers as monotonous ; but to 
me this so-called monotony serves but to give value to 
the exquisite colour-changes that are continually taking 
place. At midday, when the sun was at its zenith, 
the landscape appeared to be more or less of the colour 
which is described as khaki ; but after a violent down- 
pour, leaving the veldt one sheet of water, the scene 



\ -^^^ffl 


'^^»s 


» \ -^A ' Ji al\ 









-^.•4^- 



changed from dull gold to a sweep of deep rich purple. 
The colours varied so continually at sunrise, at sunset, 
in shadow, and in sunshine, and with such extraordi- 
nary rapidity that within a single hour there were a 
dozen violent changes in effect. Yet there was invari- 
ably one point of similarity in these scenes, however 
marked the contrast: the colouring was always cool 
and silvery. Even the white of the little Dutch farms 
that seemed to form a part of the South African land- 
scape had brilliant touches of cool spring green in the 
shutters, and the warm tones in the sky at sunset in- 
clined rather to rose than vermilion, rather to violet 
than yellow. 



World Pictures 










The veldt never has been described and never will 
be described, because it is indescribable. It exercised a 
strange, subtle influence over me for which I could not 
account. It may have been its vastness, or its beauty, 
— I cannot tell ; I only know that it took possession 
of me, that it filled me with a sensation of joy and 
greatness, that it made me feel a better man. In its 
vastness and grand simplicity it impressed me very 
much as did my first glimpse of the Sphinx ; and this 
impression, after living for four months on the veldt, 
changed not but grew stronger. 

Now that my journey is at an end, and I look back 
upon those months of campaigning, I cannot help think- 
ing of how little men, who have not lived in the country, 
or have not seen the veldt, can realise the tremendous 
influence it exercises upon the people, and how utterly 
impossible it would be to attempt to pacify and govern 
the two Republics without a thorough knowledge of 
the conditions under which their inhabitants live. One 
cannot ignore the influence of the veldt, for it will not 

202 



HILL COUNTRY NEAR BLOEMFONTEIN 



South Africa 

be ignored. It draws men together, however antago- 
nistic they may be, and whenever they may meet else- 
where the power of that association will still influence 
them. 

Yet at the same time one realises that the Boers, for 
whom it is the ideal home, are the only people in the 
world that could live permanently on the veldt ; a Eu- 
ropean would find it dreary, desolate, and well-nigh 
intolerable. 



203 



INDIA 








li^m^mmi 




A SEED STALL, DELHL INDIA 






^ I 




INDIA 



My first impression of India was a very splendid one 
indeed. I found myself, when landing at Bombay, in 
the ancient portion of the town, surrounded by a 
wealth of colour, in an atmosphere of radiating light, 
freshness, and brilliancy. India surpassed my wildest 
expectations ; the scenes I saw fired my brain, quickened 
my pulses, and filled my soul with a mad and eager 
longing to paint, paint, paint, now and at once. But 
alas ! my colour box did not hold such pigment ; the 
brightest colours in my tubes appeared but dull and 
faded, and would not nearly correspond to the glowing 
tones of earth and sky, houses and shops, and of the 
ever-changing multitudes that thronged and filled the 
streets and scenes about me. I wanted something 
purer, brighter, fresher ; this was not a gold country 
or a blue country, but a country which demanded the 
full range of my palette. I used it, but only suc- 
ceeded in creating mud, sombre and hopeless. Even 
my sheet of Whatman's paper seemed by comparison 

207 



World Pictures 




more true, and to match more nearly the sparkling 
clearness and brilliancy of the scenes. With dis- 
couragement and despair fast settling on my spirit I 
wandered about the city, drinking in with eager eyes 
the glories that were denied to my brush. Men and 
women of all races pushed and jostled me in the 
narrow thoroughfare ; there were slender Bengalese, 
Pathans, Portuguese and Parsees, Malays and Mhugs, 
Chinamen, and here and there a British soldier or 
sailor, elbowing his way with characteristic national 
persistency. Carts and carriages of grotesque ap- 
pearance, drawn by meek-eyed bullocks, gently pushed 
and forced themselves among us. 

The houses on either side the road were of every 
kind of structure. Some were stately edifices, others 
mere huts ; one and all were bright with reds and 
greens and golds, and rich with massive carvings. 

208 



BAZAAR AT DELHI 



India 



Shops could be seen everywhere, with their owners, 
grain sellers, idol sellers, money changers, sellers of 
sweetmeats, workers in silver and gold, squatting 
white-robed within them. The shop-fronts were decked 
with indescribable mosaics of gold-coloured matting 
and bamboo, each arranged in a different pattern, with 
endless variety of invention. The whole city seemed, 
as it were, a kaleidoscopic jumble of moving flower- 
beds, bright with endless varieties of colour, dazzling 
to the sight and changing with bewildering rapid- 
ity. How is it possible, I thought to myself, that 
gorgeous and varied colours such as these, gathered 
together in one small street, can be made to blend and 
harmonise ? Is it that 
the natural taste of the 
people is more perfect 
than that of any other 
nation, in the East, or 
the West, or on the 
face of the globe ? No, 
it is the sun that tones 
the colouring of India 
so greatly. Wherever 
one goes one cannot 
but feel its power as a 
harmoniser ; — the cos- 
tumes of the people 
by it are made beauti- 
ful ; colours which in 
the rays of our pale 

209 




World Pictures 




and flickering Western sun 
appear crude and vicious 
here are enveloped in its 
wondrous golden embrace 
and literally forced to har- 
monise. 

India, unlike any country 
I had yet visited, unlike 
Japan or China, was a gor- 
geous country, a country 
that boasted fine architecture, magnificent temples and 
mosques of exquisite workmanship, teeming with full 
and sumptuous colour. Palaces met one on every 
side, side by side with hovels unfit for pigs, mere 
holes in the earth, inhabited by whole families of 
wretched natives, who live there all their lives long. 
Over the native himself a veil is drawn ; no European 
can understand him and therefore nothing can be said. 
My first object in India was to catch sunlight, to 
mirror the bright light as it burned hour by hour on 
the temples and on the pal- ;,^ 

aces in the land of the 
Princes, bleaching the walls fe'i^' W 

and making them look 
whiter than they are, and 
illuminating the thousand '."iLp,'*' 
and one pinnacles as if each M^:^^§^^m^ 
was a settmg or precious gff^^[^ .■■r, ■.:■■■■ fM 
stones. Shall I ever forget 
my first sight of the Taj ? 




2IO 



THE PORCELAIN DOME, AMRTTSAR, INDIA 




I was travelling in the railway train to Agra, and hav- 
ing the compartment to myself, was stretched at full 
length on the seat, sleeping and dreaming frantically. 
As I awoke I saw a bubble, a huge variegated bubble 
of a million dainty colours reflected in the window 
opposite to me. For a moment it seemed a part of 
my dreams, but glancing over my shoulder I saw the 
original, a most fine and elegant building, of faultless 
proportions, a triumph of architecture. It was of 
white marble, exquisitely sculptured and inlaid with 
colours and jewels, a thousand golden ornaments and 
minarets. The great dome swelled heavenwards and 
tapered to a point. It was all glittering and bathed in 
that warm orange light which only the setting sun 
sheds. It is impossible to describe the Taj, because 
there is nothing in the world like it, except perhaps 



World Pictures 

a bubble from which I think the architect must have 
taken his inspiration. Over and over again I have 
seen artists attempting to paint the temple, at all times 
of the day, in early dawn, at midday in a perfect blaze 
of sun when the sky shows a vivid blue and the 
temple a clear luminous white, at sunset, and in 







twilight, and yet there has never been a picture 
painted in oil or in water-colours conveying the 
faintest idea of the Taj as I saw it. But my most 
vivid recollections and remembrances of India and 
those which are chiefly impressed upon my mind are 
not of the beautiful palaces nor the fortresses, not so 
much the memory of the Taj and its marvellous echo 
within, but, strangely enough, of the smell of the 



I 



THF TAJ AT AGRA 



India 



dry dust, a curious acrid smell — I have it in my 
nostrils still. It lingers not unpleasantly, for it wove 
itself into this ancient place, ancient yet so novel to 
me, and it brings back to me now all those first 
impressions and novel sensations which make a coun- 
try dear to one. 




On my first morning at Delhi I roamed idly about 
in a temple courtyard enjoying myself. The heat of 
India was above and around me ; the clanging of ham- 
mers, silver bells, and ornaments sounded in my ears. 
Turning sharply round to look at a fruit-stall, I sud- 
denly banged up against a great stone-coloured sacred 
bull, an odious character, a pompous, rampant, super- 
cilious brute, straying about the streets, walking straight 
through the throng of the people and knocking them 

213 



World Pictures 










down right and left like ninepins. They picked them- 
selves up smilingly, and no doubt considered it a great 
privilege to be thus treated. Anyhow, they were all 
frightfully kind to the beast, feeding and petting it 
outrageously. When it came pounding along towards 
me I raised my stick and struck it a sounding thwack 1 
Cries of indignation were raised on every side, even 
from the Mohammedans ; and the Brahmin bull, who 
had never received such treatment before, was more 
indignant than anybody. So indignant, in fact, was he 
that I found it neces- 
sary to remove myself, 
as far and as quickly 
as possible, from his 
neighbourhood. 

With an artistic 
prospect so boundless 
as the daily life of the 
214 





THE GOLDEN TEMPLE, AMRITSAR, INDIA. 



India 

people, their picturesque costumes, street, river, and 
holiday scenes in Peshawur, Lahore, Delhi, Amritsar, 
Jeypore, Ajmere, on the Shelum, the Ganges, and the 
Irrawaddy, it would be strange indeed if an artist could 
not find abundant scope for his efforts. 






'"■^oV,: 



';Uj'*^l#;.!i;#,ir,)£ 




But Benares, the greatest opium city of the world, 
is in my opinion the most decorative place in all India. 
It is an abounding delight to the artist and altogether 
indescribable. I spent three days in a boat on the 
river watching the panorama on the shore, and mak- 
ing a hundred sketches, of which only two or three 
were at all satisfactory. It would take a lifetime to 
paint the place as it deserves ; one is choked with 
material. It is quite hopeless to paint on ordinary 
oil-coated panels. The only way to approach the 
atmospheric brilliancy is to paint on a ground of pure 

215 



World Pictures 

Chinese white, and even then the result is disappoint- 
ing. Nothing in the world resembles the colour of 
Benares ; no pigment can reproduce it. The chief 
element is its tremendous brilliancy. Thousands upon 
thousands of small boats float on the holy river, and 
as many people, all sick and dying Hindoos, bathe from 







^^ffl^tt^^ 







its tawny banks in multi-coloured raiment, bright be- 
yond description. The houses of the town are pinkish 
white in colour. Little ramshackle jetties, loaded with 
people, some of whom are seated and others praying, 
jut out on to the river ; both river and shore are one 
seething mass of humanity. It was at Benares that I 
was taken to see a little old woman living in a dug- 
out cave, a holy woman who, by strong hypnotic 
power or by a simple juggler's trick, I know not 

216 



M S L E M WOMEN 



India 



which, distinctly rose up in 
the air some feet from the 
ground and slowly de- 
scended again before our 
eyes. In broad daylight 
this was rather disconcert- 






m 




I sat down to paint a 



g- 



The holy city of Mootra 
is always associated in my 
mind with monkeys; there 
were monkeys everywhere, 
temple, but monkeys climbed on my shoulders, mon- 
keys picked up my colour tubes and squeezed them 
dry, monkeys peered mockingly into my face, plucked 
out my hairs one by one, and gloated and gibbered 
over them. Yet I dared not touch them, for these 
little demons were supposed to be holy ; rather was 
I exceedingly polite to them, almost deferential, in fact, 
in my manner. A friend of mine, an artist, once went 
to Mootra ; but he has never been since, for he is a 
marked man there. He was capti- 
vated by a baby monkey, a charm- 
ing little creature, and so he tucked 
it under his arm one day and made 
off with it. He had not taken two 
steps before the hue and cry was 
raised all over monkeydom, and 
instantly thousands of monkeys 
swarmed upon every roof and door- 
way and rushed pellmell upon the 
217 




World Pictures 







unfortunate man. They chased him over walls, in 
and out of ditches, ferreted him out from hiding 
places, until, panting and exhausted, he arrived at his 
hotel with all the monkeys of Mootra at his heels, 
rampant, and demanding their brother. The mon- 
key was instantly given up, but the transgression 
was never forgotten or forgiven. That man, on pain 
of death, was not able to show his face outside the 

hotel door, and he was forced 
: rapidly and ignominiously to 
llf depart from Mootra under 
^}^ cover of night. He has never 
been there since, for fear of 




iSM^f!/f,''- --ecognition, so keen and re 



'Wim^'^ 



\ tentive is a monkey's mem- 
ory reputed to be. It was at 
Mootra that I saw one of the 



218 



JEYPORE, INDIA 



India 




most extraordinary and interesting sights possible — a 
contest of knavery between a crow, the most artful bird 
extant, and a holy monkey. A monkey sat on a wall 
with his head on one side, apparently wrapped in deep 
slumber ; a plate of food stood before him, A crow 
approached from some few yards off, hopping cau- 
tiously backwards and forwards 
and from side to side. Its small, 
beady eyes glanced swiftly now 
and again at the sleeping monkey, 
and between times took in the 
landscape with several sharp sur- 
veys. Approaching close to the 
dish, but still keeping a cautious 
lookout, it made one frantic grab 
at the meat, as swift as light- 
ning ; but the monkey, who must 

219 




World Pictures 

have had a slit open somewhere, was quicker still, 
pounced down from the wall, and collared that crow. 
And then a most awful scene ensued. The monkey, 
who, by the by, was the most wide-awake animal I 




have ever come across, certainly chuckled with dia- 
bolical glee, as he climbed back to his perch, and, sit- 
ting on one leg of the crow, he pulled the other wide 
apart, and began deliberately and slowly to pluck out 
the feathers one by one. And so I left the pious 
monkey having a perfectly glorious time. This is cer- 
tainly not the type of person to be trifled with, — 
hence my gentleness and forbearance. 



TOWN OF AMRITSAR 



India 



At Jeypore I began to work very hard and in ear- 
nest, for the place fascinated me. It reminded me 
of nothing so much as Dickens's description of 
his house in the south of France — "the pink jail." 
Jeypore is a collection of pink jails : all the houses 
are painted pink, and some have latticed and barred 
windows. Colour, air, and sunshine are alike lovely, 
and every bazaar glows in the clear light like a bunch 

j^ffWi'' 



yt 



4 SJ'^^K- 1\ , ^. 










of orchids. The costumes are beyond description for 
variety and beauty of colour. In the afternoon when 
the sun is losing power, everybody turns out to a 
kind of celestial Rag Fair. Jeypore is beautiful 
because it was treated as a city should be treated. It 
was made a pink city in one day, when the authorities 
distempered the whole place, before the visit of the 
Prince of Wales to India many years ago. This 
pink city at night when the sun sets takes an old 



221 



World Pictures 



rose-red tone, faint heliotropes appear, then bluey 
tints and purple, whilst three deep rose tones are re- 
flected in the sky in a higher key. Of all my im- 
pressions of India perhaps this one is the most vivid, 
the rose-red city towards evening with the glowing 
white robes of the people, which created a harmony of 
old rose and silver unequalled by anything I have 




:ii:C|,,|^tfr^ 



\ 






-:^^:^4im 






ever seen. If one takes up a stand at a street corner 
some most extraordinary ai|jl startling outfits are to 
be seen in Jeypore in the way of carts. A camel at- 
tached to a carriage will pass by, then a couple of oxen 
drawing a cart that must certainly have been designed 
in the days before the flood. There are also leopards 
and lions pulling small chariots for all the world like 
a circus, but the whole is most picturesque in effect. 

In Hyderabad, that most gorgeous and sumptuous 
of cities, there is noticeable everywhere a strange 
mingling of the modernity of life with absolute 



India 

mediasvalism. On the Rotten Row great noblemen 
sweep by in smart up-to-date equipages made in Long 
Acre, with fine horses and bran-new trappings, followed 
by retinues which must most certainly have existed 
five hundred years ago, and even in the time of the 
Saracens. There are superb Parsees dressed in chain 
armour, whirling their rifles about so vigorously and so 




ferociously that one is quite terrified as they pass. As 
I swung in a graceful rocking movement through the 
streets, holding a superior view of the city from my 
elevated position on the back of a monstrous elephant, 
I seemed, almost in a moment, to be transported back 
to the days of the old "Arabian Nights" of long ago. 
Being the only European in the city that afternoon, — 
for the natives were rather fanatical just then, and one 
generally requires a small escort, — I enjoyed myself 
thoroughly, despite the fact that I had spent one long 
weary morning learning to climb on to my dignified 

223 



World Pictures 




mount, and was spending as much time now in en- 
devouring to keep on it. 

I found myself in a place that has been very rightly 
described as the hot-bed of intrigue. Scandal, malice, 
and mystery lurked behind every lattice. As I passed 
houses luscious with colours of yellow and orange, I 
could almost hear the whisperings of the women and 
the stealthy rustling of their silken garments. One 
learns from the rhapsodies of Hindoo writers that the 
ladies of India are exceedingly beautiful — that they 
have locks as black as the clouds of June, and brows 
as bright as the autumn moon. By European writ- 
ers, also, much has been said of their costume and of 
their beauty, but I never saw an Indian lady, except 
on rare occasions when one of their little gilded cars 
chanced to pass me by ; regular little moving temples 

224 



NAUTCH GIRLS, INDIA 



India 



they are, gorgeous with carvings and bright colours, 
when I caught a swift glance of a fair female face peep- 
ing out. One sees many women about the streets sit- 
ting before their houses or carrying burdens ; in fact, 
the country swarms with them, but the great ladies are 
secluded. At the village wells, which have been very 
truly described in the Bible as being the centre of life, 
women are to be seen in great abundance, dressed in 
bright purples and reds, chatting and laughing gaily 
with the men, as they draw their daily portion of 
water. The wells are particularly remarkable in 
Hyderabad, whence, by the way, I seem to have 
wandered. 

On the outskirts of the city, as I and Jumbo were 
wending our way homeward that memorable afternoon, 
we came across a small Indian boy, who, as we passed, 
began to laugh mischievously and to beat upon an 
empty biscuit tin which 
bore the name of Messrs. 
Huntly and Palmer. We Qil^JJ'tf I, ,, , 
passed in dignified silence, 5-?|fg J1 l^^jO^S^! \- 
taking not the slightest no- '^"^^^^ ■] iL^jl X||l 

tice or the noise ; but un- j5_ 

fortunately for us, a buzzing ~^^~^\\ jj )'/ ) !'[ ' 1 1 j ', i\ >i \ 
nest of bees close by no- ,/l 
ticed it very particularly, "^ 
and evidently taking it into "^ 
their stupid heads that the — ^ 
elephant and I had beaten ^ 

the tin expressly to annoy 

225 



World Pictures 

thenij they came swarming after us in one huge wave. 
Certain death stared us in the face when, contrary to 
my expectations, Jumbo heroically rose to the situa- 
tion, put on his smartest pace, and literally sprinted 
along the edge of the cHfF. I clung to his neck, as 
his huge bulk swayed backwards and forwards over a 



4^ >-^A. , , 



'f, 



i! ^i 







yawning precipice certainly not less than eight hundred 
feet in depth. However, we left the enemy behind 
us and returned home in safety. That was a disgust- 
ing experience, and frightened me even more than the 
episode of the leopard who sneezed on me, although 
that, too, was by no means a pleasant sensation. I 
was coming home from dinner late one moonlight 
night, accompanied by my servant, when from a hedge 
close by I heard a heavy depressed sigh, followed by 
a huge sneeze which sprinkled me all over. I looked 
up and saw a leopard with great green eyes smiling 
contentedly with relief at his convulsion. " Leopard 

226 



India 



coughing," said my servant. " Master running," 
said I ; and suited the action to the word. 

In Hyderabad, I stayed with some delightful people 
who were just then in the throes of that not unmixed 
joy, house-decorating. The wife, who was by way of 
being artistic, persuaded me to help her with one of the 
rooms, the dining-room I think it was. I accepted, 



W^nn^,rtf^} '\- 








z^ — I. 1-7%== 






sri-^-. 



partly out of affection for them, and partly because I 
was curious to see something of the Indian artisan. 
The experience damped any preconceived ideas I may 
have entertained of building a house in India. There 
were twenty-five painters in the one room, besides innu- 
merable servants. A week was occupied in procuring 
size to mix with the distemper for the walls ; brushes 
were not to be got at all. The men had not the faintest 
idea of technique or how to handle paint, and they 
dabbed it on the walls by aid of small, hard bits of 
cotton-wool rolled into tiny balls. Nevertheless, they 
showed a certain appreciation of colour and a facility in 

227 



World Pictures 



matching tones, ^uch as the ablest of our skilled British 
workmen could riot equal. I met in this same house 
one of the clergymen attached to a most scholarly and 



learned mission 
who had come 
try to convert 
Brahmins and 
men who possess 
vated and subtle 
world. I was 
how the mission 
and that gave 
vulgar question, 
many converts 
the previous 
not sure of him 
ly repHed. This 




from Cambridge, 
out to India to 
the high - class 
Mohammedans, 
the most culti- 
intellects in the 
anxious to know 
was progressing, 
rise to a rather 
I asked him how 
he had made in 
year. " One, and 
either," he frank- 
to tal seemed 



rather discouraging as the result of a whole year's hard 
work by a dozen or so of England's finest scholars, 
but the clergyman assured me that it was better to 
win over one man than to net them in sackfuls, as a 
minister, whose sect shall be nameless, once did — 
twenty-five thousand joyous, happy converts in the 
course of a few short months. 

The temples of India are perfect paradises for the 
etcher : he finds such marvellous lattice work ; such 
domes — some of copper richly gilt, others of blue 
porcelain, and green and gold enamel ; such lofty sculp- 
tured arches ; and marble minarets of exquisite beauty 

and proportion, with colours like an angel's dream. 

228 



DELHI 



India 

The golden temple of Amritsar, a solid golden temple 
blazing in the afternoon sun, with a perfect counterpart 
of its magnificent self reflected in the smooth waters of 
the river beneath, is perhaps the most beautiful of all. 
If you wish to be reminded of the grand monuments 
which many of the great of India raised to the memories 
of their consorts, you have simply to turn your eyes to 
Oodeen's Tomb where the faithful are seen on the ver- 
andah standing in dreamy attitudes, for it is their custom 
to assemble here to wish, and to dream, and to build 
castles in the air, under rich-coloured rugs of Persia, 
which serve as blinds when the sun makes it too hot 
to gaze out on the open courtyard. No one but Mr. 
Rudyard Kipling has shown us the true India ; the 
Moslem lounging in the little blind house on the city 
wall, the Hindoo of Hindooism in the bazaar and the 
temple, and the Hindoo of English service, lurking 
about the compound of the Sahib. By his work alone 
we are enabled to see the blaze of Oriental colour, 
through the sobering gaze of a northern temperament. 
He has shown us Indian children, Indian night, and 
Indian winter ; he has convinced us of the India of 
byways, suburbs, country roads, daily labour, and 
*' universal sun;" he has given us scenes that reveal 
the full, common, but alien vitality of the race and 
the place. 



229 



CASHMERE 




AT SRINIGAR, CASHMERE 




CASHMERE 



Cashmere is a perfect etcher's paradise, full of small 
and graceful form. It is the quaintest place imagin- 
able, for the houses look as if they had been sitting up 
all night, or as if they had been engaged in a sort of 
diabolical dance, and had been struck stationary in the 
midst of it, for no two of them are at the same angle. 
Syrinagar is perhaps the ideal city for the etcher and 
master of line ; there are bridges composed of myriads 
of blocks of wood, irregular buildings looking almost 
like lacework of wood, beginning with a plain white 
wall, probably dazzling with sunshine, and getting 
richer and richer, until they culminate at the top 
in a perfect blaze of detail and masses of flowers. In 
fact, these Cashmere houses seem in their dainty 
structure to resemble nothing more closely than 
flowers. One cannot help thinking that if James 
MacNeill Whistler could only be let loose for a while 
in Cashmere, what joys there would be for the col- 
lector and art lover. 

233 



World Pictures 










I myself lived for some months in a boat on 
the Jhelum, and this is, without doubt, the dreamiest 
and most beautiful life imaginable. One drifts lazily- 
down a golden river, bound in with hills of blue, 
and lying beneath a pale green sky. At sundown 
the water changes to a bluish grey, and how well 
the grey sky, mixed with opul tints, with a crimson 
^^--- dash of the setting sun, 
'F^^^^Sff^' is reflected on its calm 
Irf".' surface, while the banks 
Iw' and the groves of wood 
'%/ behind are bathed in a 
mystic atmosphere of 
greenish mist ! At noon, 
numerous figures in col- 
oured dresses are to be 
seen seated on rafts, and 
on steps, under big um- 
234 




I 




I 



FAMILY OF NOMADIC TRIBE 



Cash 



mere 



brellas, trying to catch a breath of the air, as it 
now and then wafts itself in warm gusts across the 
river ; and a Cashmere family of small brown babies, 
clad in red and blue, at play on the edge of the river, 
is a charming subject for a picture. Many bold and 
rich effects can be obtained by painting an Eastern 
city at the hottest hour ; there is the dull green river, 
with brown steps leading to it, perhaps a white arch- 
way, with delicate foliage of tender green, and a clear 
blue sky, and all these details gain tone from the 
dark shadow within the archway. It sounds crude 
on paper, and many an artist would make it so on 
canvas ; to be successful one must be able to triumph 
over the difficulties of blending strong colour in a 
strong light. 

Everybody is prepared to find picturesqueness 




- / . 



235 



World Pictures 






:^ 




in Japan, while, on the other hand, almost all the 
artists and writers, with the exception of one or two, 
who have painted or treated Indian subjects since 
India became British, have left an ineffaceable impres- 
sion of dulness on the mind. The dulness must 
have been in the artist or in the critic ; it most 
certainly is not in the ancient cities, with their 
streets, temples, and natives, which are mines of 
picturesque beauty, boundless fields for the work of 
the artist. Until quite lately, India was as much 
given over to ready-made art and gaudy convention 
as the Italy of half a century ago, when all the women 
wore laced bodices and " tovaglie," all the men Tyro- 




SAPOOR, CASHMERE 



Cashmere 

lean hats, and all the landscapes had balustrade fore- 
grounds. The East is not the East save in her own 
light. The sun is the centre and the ruler of her 
life, and art has not been trained to serve the sun. 
Unfortunately, a short tour in India seems to pro- 



^--/^^ 








J 



vide a man with sufficient material for dull studio 
pictures painted at leisure in Bohemia to last him 
his lifetime. He puts in plenty of hot coppery 
colour, cobalt skies, hard blue shadows, and burning 
midday light ; but the more violent and metallic 
the colour, the less the illumination, and his big 
canvases, outdoing one another in strong yellow 
and indomitable blue, never show a touch of the 
luminosity of even a London sky. 

I have seen India in every possible aspect, its 

237 



World Pictures 




churches and houses, 
its streets with native 
shops and workers in 
brass and metal, its 
sacred rivers with their 
house-boats and pil- 
grims ; and my opinion 
is, that the aesthetic and 
artistic possibilities, in 
various forms, that are 
to be found in our great 
Indian Empire — that 
empire of which every 
Englishman is so justly 
proud, and of which most Englishmen know so little 
— are not to be surpassed in any country on the face 
of the globe. If a depreciator of India's charms and 
picturesqueness could but see a pink homestead, sweet 
in colour, abutting on the river wherein it is reflected 
in opalescent shadows, or catch a glimpse of Cashmere 
through its pearly haze, with the women seated, like 
queens of merchandise, at the street corners or in the 
bazaars vending their goods, the men, when labour is 
done, sitting at the door of an inn in grey bernouses 
enjoying their pipes and coffee, or a belle of Cash- 
mere with a gorgeous veil all wrought in gold and her 
ears richly bedizened with the wonderful gold work 
o^ Jeypore, — surely he, too, would succumb to her 
charms and frankly admit that the great Indian Em- 
pire is the home of loveliness and beauty. 

238 





- -/^- 



RIVER DWELLING AT SRINAGAR 



Cash 



mere 




When I painted in Cashmere, my great wish was to 
realise the brilliancy of Indian sunlight, to represent 
the dazzling luminosity of the atmospheric effects, 
rather than to make studies of the local colour and 
native types. As a means to the end, I adopted a 
particular manner of using oil paint, applying it to my 
canvas in such a way that the sur- 
face of each picture had something 
of the quality of pastel. By this 
device, and by avoiding hard de- 
finition in the rendering of light or 
shade masses, I succeeded, I think, 
in fairly suggesting the curious 
shimmer of heat, and the blaze of 
light which in the tropics bleaches 
even the most vivid colours and 
modifies them to a harmony of 
warm greys. 

239 




World Pictures 




Once when travelling 
in Cashmere I and my 
daughter had a very 
narrow escape. Our 
guide had gone on be- 
fore to prepare a meal 
for us at the next dak 
bungalow and somehow 
or other we lost our 
way. To add to our 
discomfort, we knew 
that just about this time people were being murdered 
right and left by the natives for a rupee or two. 
Night came on, dark purple night, and it was im- 
possible to see a foot ahead. We could not even guide 
our horses, but trusted rather to their instinct. Yet, 
for all we knew, they might at any moment dash us 
over a precipice into the water thousands of feet below. 
The loneliness of that ride 
was simply petrifying. Sud- :iisf~^,^f| 
denly, in the distance we saw '^ 
a light, and as we drew 
nearer we could detect little 
black forms jumping in front 
of it. Presently two lights 
detached themselves from 
the general mass, and came 
moving towards us. As 
they approached, we dis- 
covered that they were car- 

240 




A SINGING GIRL, CASHMERE 



Cash 



mere 




ried by black men, giants, as they seemed to us In our 
fear. They advanced, waving flaming natural torches, 
made of boughs of trees, above their heads, and shout- 
ing in hoarse voices. They dashed straight up to us, 
swung me oflF my horse on to their shoulders, as though 
I were a feather-weight, while another man led my 
daughter's pony. We thought that our last moment 
had come, that they were about to murder us, crucify 
us, or hack us in pieces. My daughter told me after- 
wards that she had thought during the few hours that 
followed of everything she had ever done or said ; she 
had even thought of the back-garden and the fowl-run. 
For my part, I endeavoured to be very polite, and 
from my undignified position I even tried to bow, and 
to flatter our captors on their personal appearance, 
though it was in a small, faint voice. They took not 
the slightest notice of either of us, however, but 
trudged on and on for about six miles. Suddenly 
they stopped, and laid us down very gently on the 

241 



World Pictures 

steps of our own dak bungalow, took our horses 
round to the back to be cared for, and slipped quietly 
off, without a word> and without even a request for a 
tip. 

This was our last adventure in Cashmere. 



242 



BURMA 




._^^ ^gj ^m? ^m^mjiR.^ — ^-r.^.r-.^.-^ . ^ 




gg|: 


^^n^^ 






.' ....'v-Jw. V.:,:*.5 






ft. ' A- 


J, 






Bt-^-^ 




A 






'i^.vSfr*:^i*«ffrr-^-rfcr 



,.»n' ni ;^ >»a i C i'l i m , - 



"on the road to mandalay" 



=^"fr^ 



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<-4^.^'- 






: .^'^ 



iM 










BURMA 

On the way to Mandalay I met a remarkably pretty 
little Burmese girl. She got into the same railway 
carriage with me, and her small face wore an expres- 
sion of such unutterable grief that I felt constrained 
to say something to her. " Can you speak English ? " 
I asked in a loud, clear voice. With the prettiest, 
sobbing, broken accent I have ever heard, she answered, 
" Just a little." " But you seem very sad. Where 
are you going ? " I inquired. " Ah," she said, " I am 
going to Mandalay. I have just been to Rangoon to 
see my husband off. He is an English officer ; he is 
going away in a big boat, and he may never, never 
come back to me again." Here the poor little girl 
broke down entirely. " Dear me, that is very terrible. 
What is your name ^ " said I very gently. She looked 
up at me from out of her little pocket handkerchief 
with serious, woe-begone eyes, and gave me a long, 
utterly unpronounceable Burmese name. I told her I 

245 



World Pictures 




thought it rather a strange name, and difficult for me 
to pronounce. " Yes," she said, " I suppose that 
would seem a strange name to you. But you know 
he never called me that; he called me by quite a differ- 
ent name, an English name ; he always called me 
* Darling.' " And this poor little lonely mite was 
proud and comforted in the possession of a real Eng- 
lish name. 

Burma is the land of orchids ; rare blooms grow in 
abundance on every hillside, and flourish in lieu of 
geraniums in every cottage window. From being iso- 
lated throughout so long a period of her history, 
Burma has evolved quite a type of her own. The 
Burmans are a charming, loyal, light-hearted people, 
and their system of education is simple, but very good. 
The children, adored by every one, are allowed to go 
wherever they choose, and do whatever pleases them 
most ; hardly anything is denied to them. Adults in- 
terest themselves in their sports and games, and every 
little detail of their daily life and education ; in fact, 

246 



Burma 

they are looked upon as their equals in every respect. 
'I^hus a Burman's childhood is one long dream of un- 
mitigated joy. He is rarely punished, for he is seldom 
naughty, and he is taught to reverence every one older 
or weaker than himself. Burma reminds me to a very 
great extent of Japan ; the people there have that same 
happy temperament, and love of the beautiful, the 
same unselfish, loyal disposition as have the Japanese. 
The young Burman is taught from a very early age to 
be brave and self-reliant. When only one year old, a 
baby is trusted to crawl or walk alone upon a flimsy 
platform, on a bamboo mat several feet above the 
ground or water. Its own natural instincts to bathe 
and splash about in the first warm, dirty shower- 
puddle it comes across are never restrained by the 
mother ; the child thus soon becomes accustomed to 
water ; and as Burman babies wear little or no clothing, 
no real harm is done. When a child is four years old. 




247 



World Pictures 



all the friends of the family assemble to decide upon 
its name. If a boy, and adopts a religious life, he 
enters upon his monastic novitiate between the ages of 
twelve and seventeen. He is equipped in royal attire, 
and is attended with much pomp and magnificence to 
the monastery. A recluse is showered with presents 
and comforts of every possible kind in Burma, since 
nothing is considered too good or too beautiful for a 
man who devotes his whole life to religious services. 
A Burman's idea of a perfect life is, first, to become 
healthy, then to acquire knowledge, then to become 
versed in the art of pleasing, and lastly to marry, after 
which he settles down to work. Having amassed 
sufficient wealth, he leaves his work to his children, 
and spends the remainder of his life in pious devotion 
to his religion. This accomplished, he dies perfectly 

content, with his 
\ brightest ambition 

S realised. Children 

swarm everywhere in 
Burma, in the streets, 
in the gardens, and in 
the houses, and woe 
betide the unfortu- 
nate person who dares 
to wound or repulse 
even one of these lit- 
tle ones. Parents 
employ their leisure 
hours in making boats 






wA- 







J 






'\-J 



-77^ -TM 



248 



WATCHING A BOAT RACE, BURMAH. 



Burma 




and kites and peg-tops for their children, also in teach- 
ing them the use of those implements which they 
must handle in after life, such as mills for grinding 
rice, spring wheels, boats, and carts, and tools used 
in pottery, dyeing, weaving, lacquer-making, black- 
smith's work, etc, etc. The children grow up with 
these things, and later learn to take a real share in 
their manipulation. 

A Burmese crowd is the most brilliantly coloured 
spectacle you could possibly imagine. I remember 
once going to see a boat race. The race itself was in- 
teresting, for thousands and thousands of men com- 
peted. They were all huddled together and paddling 
away for dear life, while one or two stood up, dancing 
and singing and venting war-whoops to encourage the 
rowers to greater energy. But the performance was 
as nothing compared to the picture created by those 
scores of spectators massed together on the slope of a 
sandy bank, in every variety of gay costume, in silks, 
satins, and smiles, enveloped in a blazing sun-charged 
atmosphere ; every eye was expectant and strained for 
a glimpse of the struggle taking place between the 
rival boats. The Indian silks are lovely, but they are 

249 



World Pictures 




as coarse as canvas compared with the dresses of these 
people ; and the colours were marvellous. There were 
pinks, yellows, oranges ; the turbans were of rich deep 
red and old rose, and the umbrellas of every hue 
imaginable. The sky was pale blue overhead, and the 
scene full of brilliant and yet most exquisitely and 
subtly harmonised colour ; it was eloquent with joyous- 
ness and hot with Eastern sunshine. 

Burmese women are the most delightful people 
imaginable, their manners are so cultured and refined. 
Their dress is composed of a single length of cloth or 
silk wound round and about the figure ; flowers and 
jewels being worn in the hair, and over the shoulders 
kerchiefs made generally of bright Chinese embroidery. 
Every evening, when the day's work is over, and the 
plates have been washed and put away after the even- 
ing meal, the young girls of every family retire to 
beautify themselves for the visits of their beaux. 
Tresses of false hair are wound in amongst their own 

250 



Burma 

and a thick white paste smeared over their faces. 
Heavy gold bangles or ear-plugs are worn, as well as 
broad necklaces of jewels and pearls. Sometimes a 
woman will carry on her person several thousands of 
rupees' worth of gold. Her evening toilette completed, 
the girl descends to the house-place and begins some 
light, easy work. Presently the lover appears ; he too 
has made his toilette, and his face is glossy and his 
long hair neatly coiled. If he is at all an ardent wooer 
he should arrive laden with flowers and ornaments, 
oranges, rolls of poetry, and all kinds of presents to 
lay at the feet of the fair one. He is allowed only one 
hour of bliss, for the old people, who are always some- 
where in the background acting as chaperons, retire to 
bed soon after twilight. Of course this is a very ad- 
vanced stage in Burman love-making; the Gordian 
knot is then almost tied. Many forms and obser- 
vances have already 
been gone through A 

at the cost of much "Nj I 

patient labour on M^ \i^^Mj^, 



the part of the young ^-%:^,W«'t'l V#>"I?W i i 

man. Inthebegm- _^^¥;^„^i^_^^i5i^^^ i 
e makes love ..'}^r-zJ-3-^'-:-^^r^--^^:E=^—'^ 



the girl goes he fol- ~Tt7'^"^* 
lows her; whether >rr i\__ 
she goes to market 
to sell or buy, or 

251 



World Pictures 




-^r^-'i^ 








whether she goes for a walk down the street, he must 
be there, staring hard at her face, his eyes almost bolt- 
ing out of his head. I once painted a silk market in 
Mandalay. I was there for quite a fortnight, and 
every day I saw a silly fool of a boy seated on an 
upturned barrel, never moving a muscle, but staring 
with all his might and main at a very pretty little girl 
selling silks in a stall. She apparently was perfectly 
unconscious of his gaze, and went on with her work, 
never once looking in his direction. Nevertheless, she 
had seen him ; somehow or other out of the corner 
of her eye she had taken note of his clothes, his feat- 
ures, his bearing, and by the next day she could tell 
you exactly how much money he had got and who 
his parents were. After three days of this, a girl, hav- 
ing satisfied herself that the man is a good match, will 
turn, her head and look at him once or twice. This is 

252 



I 



AN UP COUNTRY VILLAGE 



Burma 

considered to be a giddy day ; the lover is more than 
content, and is nervous and hysterical, for his affairs 
are advancing almost too rapidly. If, by chance, at 
the end of a week the girl has looked at him for three 
or four minutes at a time, he is transported into a 
seventh heaven of joy, and if when two weeks are 
over, her eyes have lingered continually in his direc- 
tion, he begins to make his toilette for the twilight 
visit. Then comes the supreme moment of his life. 
He is admitted into a lower room and told to push 
his hand through a hole in the ceiling ; there he must 
wait some minutes, trembling with anticipation. If 
the girl likes him, the hand will be firmly grasped ; 
if she rejects his suit, it will be rapped sharply over 
the knuckles. Some years ago in Burma it was not at 
all an unusual thing if a girl really disliked a man for 
her to take out a knife and playfully chop off one or 
two fingers. 



'^ r 



^ 



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V 












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253 



World Pictures 



Burma is full of fascinating subjects for the painter. 
If an artist were to pitch his sketching easel at, let us 
say, a street corner in Mandalay, and supposing his 
search to be not only for the fatal " picturesque," but 
simply for life, life of air, of light, of movement and 
accident, he would find a wealth of material of which 
artists are, as a body, entirely ignorant, even though 
he were to paint Burma taken unawares, as she comes 
and goes in her working garments. There are few, if 
any, countries where such a vast field lies open to the 
artist as in India, and there is not one which has been 
so sparsely and feebly occupied. From the eternal 
snows of the Himalayas to Ceylon, the mountains, 
jungles, rivers, palaces, and people, all supply materials 
which from their magnitude and wealth of colouring 
almost defy reproduction. It is this, perhaps, that has 
made painters of standing shrink from venturing upon 
the undertaking ; at any rate, the ground remains 
practically unbroken, and beneath it lies a mine not 

only of material, but of gold 
for whoever successfully ex- 
plores it. It is astonishing 
that artists have practically 
allowed amateurs to be the 
sole traffickers in a most im- 
portant business. In Manda- 
lay one might almost hold up 
a frame to nature and, shifting 
it about, paint haphazard what 
may be seen through it. 
254 




Burma 




As in Japan, the interest of 
the artist or the writer in Burma 
is much engaged by the chil- 
dren. There is a child among 
large red pots on a bamboo 
balcony ; three little figures are 
taking a quiet smoke on the 
road ; a tired woman is carry- 
ing her baby home on her hip, 
which is the way of perambu- 
lating children about in Burma. 
This mother has evidently had 
a hard day's toil, and the infant 
is weary, too. Both mother 
and child are gnawing at some 
luscious sugar cane, but apparently with little relish, 
having waited for food so long that they are simply 
too exhausted to enjoy their meal. A sturdy little 
child comes trotting down the road clothed in a single 
white garment, though, judging from the charming 
indifference portrayed in the face, the small person 
would be just as happy without any clothes at all. 
A slender girl in a rich red garment is turning towards 
an inner chamber like a cave. But if I were to call 
attention to all the delightful little peeps into Burman 
child life to be seen during a single morning while 
sketching in the streets I should have no room to say 
anything else. 

I was at first a little disappointed at the colour of 
the sky ; it had not the full deep tone of even an 

255 



World Pictures 

Italian sky, but something of the slatey hue much 
affected by modern painters, especially in France. 
What I enjoyed most of all were the street scenes, 
with their accompaniment of brightly dressed figures 
set out upon backgrounds of shop or temple, or the 













■ iA ''*^1 









masses of buildings, mostly in sunlight. The effect 
of the sunlight throwing violet shadows is very bril- 
liant, without being dazzling. The scenes swim in 
light, the air seems tremulous with colour. To pro- 
duce this quality of colour trembling in the light, or 
mysterious in the shade, upon canvas is no common 
achievement, — one indeed apparently untried by most 
artists, whose paint is as dead as a paving stone. I shall 
not attempt to exhaust the artistic variety of the scenes, 
— the butchers' shops, with their green awnings ; the 
picturesque confusion of forms on the river, with its 

256 



AT MANDALAY, BURMAH 



Burma 

medley of boats and poles and stages ; the delicate 
and complicated drawing of architectural masses ; the 
trees sometimes with their gold leaves melting into 
a morning sky, sometimes flecking a red wall at sun- 
down with a trembling network of shadow ; the river 
with the white sun just glinting on it, and the slight 
wooden bridge, over which are passing in single file 
six or seven tired labourers returning from their toil. 
The white glint of sun seems to say good-bye and 
good-night. 




257 



CHINA 




IN THE CITY OF SHANGHAI 




CHINA 



The colouring of China, of her cities and canals, re- 
minds me of a meerschaum pipe, the old and favour- 
ite pipe of an inveterate smoker. The cities, with 
their rich red-browns and golds ranging right away- 
down to blue-blacks, have an ancient, smoked, and 
polished appearance, partly due to actual varnish, but 
mainly to the continual friction of thousands of human 
bodies from time immemorial. The gardens are black 
and sooty in colour, the lakes are green and stagnant, 
and yet to the painter how beautiful ! The rocks and 
temples look cold, bleak, and neglected, but what per- 
fect design and placing is here ! They are strangely 
saddening, these poor dead gardens, ghosts of an art 
that was once so great, but which has lain buried for 
two thousand years, and is now as stagnant as their 
lakes. They are evidences of a people whose minds 
were once so fine and so creative, of an empire the 

261 



World Pictures 




greatest and the most an- 
cient on the face of the 
earth, that had attained its 
present civilisation at a 
time when all Europe 
might be considered com- 
paratively as barbarous. 
One feels that they are 
marking time, these peo- 
ple, that they are waiting 
for something. Their 
minds and imaginations 
are as fine as ever ; they 
do not lack the genius 
to conceive nor the dex- 
terity to execute ; and 
yet they remain stationary. Surely when China does 
move forward once more we shall hear of it. 

The finest picture I have ever seen was painted by 
a Chinaman ; the manufacture of earthenware has been, 
brought by the Chinese to a pitch of perfection un- 
equalled by any nation ; their discovery of paper- 
making is of very ancient date, while of the antiquity 
of the art of printing in China there can be no doubt. 
With the state among them of agriculture, the thera- 
peutic art, and the sciences I will not deal, as I am 
concerned more nearly with things Chinese that are 
beautiful and picturesque. Their architecture, music, 
literature, and painting are greatly undervalued and 
quite misunderstood by the average traveller in China.. 

262 



China 



For instance, I had a pre- 
conceived idea that Chinese 
architecture was void of taste, 
grandeur, beauty, or conven- 
ience, whereas it appealed to 
me tremendously from the 
artistic standpoint. I found 
it beautiful in line, quaint and ^(^O^ 
unexpected in arrangement, 
magnificent in colour, and 
their pagodas and temples, 
stone figures and columns 
towering on the hills like 
monuments to departed great- 
ness, interested me extremely. 

With regard to Chinese 
poetry, modern and ancient, it is difficult for a 
European to form a proper judgment, and their music 
to the Western ear is equally involved ; while upon 
the perfection of their various instruments — clarionets, 
kettle-drums, gongs, and violoncellos — I am quite 
incapable of passing an opinion. The manufacture of 
silks has been established in China at a period too 
remote to be ascertained from history, but perhaps of 
all the mechanical arts the cutting of ivory and the 
manufacture of various metals and trinkets of silver 
and gold filigree are those in which the Chinese have 
attained the highest degree of perfection. 

China is the country for the artist, not for the nice- 
minded tourist who looks upon its dirt as dirt and 

263 




World Pictures 



'MiS^^M?^ 




not as tone, who shudders as he passes their many- 
butchers' shops, revolts at the sight of cats, dogs, 
and nests of mice displayed for sale in lieu of beef and 
mutton. The decorative sense of the artist overcomes 
his natural dislike for what he sees there ; the horrors 
of the butcher's shop are to him unknown, and he 
looks upon them merely as gorgeous notes or colour- 
splashes of red on a grey street. Loathsome diseases 
pass by and leave him unmoved ; nauseous odors 
come not near his nostrils ; no thoughts of any signifi- 
cance in nature present themselves to him, except the 
purely artistic delights of colour and form. China is, 
par excellence, the happy hunting-ground of the im- 
pressionist ; and to the painter who goes there for 
inspiration, so clear and impartial a mirror as that of 

264 



A TEA-HOUSE, SHANGHAI, CHINA. 



China 

Tennyson's heroine, the Lady of Shalott, might well 
be the only guide in the choice of subjects. He need 
feel but the one regret, that no matter how keen and 
rapid may be his powers of observation, he can 
fix and make his own only a meagre selection of the 
hundred pictures on every side. The joss houses, the 
river scenes, the gardens, the streets, all overwhelm 
and daze him with a wealth of colour and surfeit of 
subjects. Of all the many possible pictures, perhaps 
that of a typical street scene will transport the reader 
most effectually into the true atmosphere of China, 
and give him some faint idea of that country which, in 
my opinion, is the most gorgeous, fantastic, and truly 
beautiful to be seen on the face of the globe. 

Imagine yourself standing in the principal street of 
the old native city of Shanghai, watching a bony, 




World Pictures 




browned, and wrinkled old man, 
with his horde of assistants, dyeing 
silks and cottons in the open air, 
using dyes of colours which have 
never been seen out of China, — 
delicate blues suggestive of the skies 
of some of the early Italian pictures, 
yellows you have never yet seen, 
and vermilions only dreamt of. Imagine this man 
printing coarse linens with beautiful designs, exactly 
as a wood-engraver prints a fine India proof, by 
burnishing from the back, and offering for sale this 
fine work which has taken him a whole week to 
execute at the meagre sum of twopence per yard. 
Close by the cotton printer you may see a poor wretch 
with his head stuck through a block of wood, every 
one as they pass jostling and kicking him ; he has 
perhaps stolen something. 

The first and predominating feature of the scene is 
the blaze and breadth of life. Radiating, palpitating 
light hangs before everything like a veil, shutting out 
detail by excess of brilliancy. Wherever the light 
shines, the colouring is brown and rich, but on peering 
beneath archways and into shops one looks into a 
bluey-black atmosphere, in which little 
ivory figures detach themselves crisply 
and delicately but never abruptly. The 
whole city has a battered, ramshackle, 
and ancient appearance. There are 
enormous lanterns of fantastic shapes 

266 









^-. ^' 4 



'£ ?y 



\..- •*. 



' '^^j^v-^K._P^^^J^^;/,, 






^'> 



M\. 




CANTON 



Chi 



ina 



at street corners, adorned with sweeps of red and 
black lettering, lanterns that look as if they had 
been there always ; the houses have a tumble-down 
appearance and are of natural wood, with a deal of 
dainty lattice work about them looking like lace ; the 




"-;^-b^ 



joss houses are neglected and forlorn ; the dogs half 
starved, with the bones piercing through their flesh ; 
little round-headed, ivory-coloured children sit sad and 
serious, playing in the gutters ; while old gentlemen of 
over a hundred, but hale and hearty, are seen literally 
frisking about the city. Blues, greens, golds, and ver- 
milions abound everywhere ; long strips of signboards 

267 



World Pictures 



hang from every house, bearing inscriptions in gilt char- 
acters setting forth the nature of the wares to be sold, 
and the honest reputation of the seller ; temples with 
pagoda-shaped roofs and golden images fill one with a 




fN 'f^ 



kind of supernatural awe as one passes ; large gateways, 
splendidly gilt and coloured, are placed at different 
points in the city, and these are monuments to the mem- 
ory of those who have deserved well of the community, 
or who have attained an unusual longevity. 

Against this brilliant background full of colour is the 
surging mass of the people, ever flowing onward like a 
gigantic wave. It seems rather sad in colour, with the 
ivory-hued faces, blue or black cotton jackets, wide 

268 



China 




cotton trousers, and large straw 
hats and shoes. Here and 
there an aristocrat is to be seen 
with his short jacket buttoned 



~yO^^ close round the neck and 



folded across the breast, the 
sleeves remarkably wide, his 
quilted satin petticoat, black 
velvet cap, and black satin 
boots. Women are commonly seen among the crowd, 
either walking or being trundled along in wheelbarrows. 
Most of them are dressed in blue cotton frocks like 
those of the men, reaching to the middle of the thigh, 
with red, green, or yellow trousers reaching a little below 
the calf of the leg, where they are drawn in close, the 
better to display an ankle and a foot, which, for singu- 
larity at least, may challenge the world. This little, 
distorted, disproportionate member is as fine as tinsel 
and tawdry ornament 
can make it, and the 
ankle is bandaged round 
with parti-coloured 
cloths, ornamented with 
fringe and tassel. The 
hair, which is screwed 
up close behind and 
folded into a ridge or 
knot across the crown 
of the head, is adorned 
with large artificial asters 

269 




World Pictures 

of red, blue, or yellow, and two bodkins of silver, brass, 
or iron. The face and neck are daubed with white lead 
and vermilion, and the eyebrows blackened. 

Shanghai is full of buzzing, palpitating life; the 
houses are full ; the streets are full ; the dingy little 








shops are full. There is no loafing ; each one is intent 
on his own particular business. And everything is 
business in China; the streets are lined with sellers of 
the most curious wares imaginable; doubtful dainties 
of quaint colours and shapes are spread out on flat 
wooden trays, or perched on barrels to tempt the 
passer-by ; curious fruits in wicker baskets are sold by 
doubled-up, wizen-faced old men ; also daintily carved 
wooden gods, rice, tea, and other eatables. All these 
tents and booths, as well as the movable workshops of 
tinkers, gilders, wood-carvers, cobblers, and blacksmiths 

270 



NURSERY GARDEN, CHINA. 



Chi 



ina 




swarming in the road, con- 
tract the spacious street 
into a narrow pathway, 
just wide enough for two 
of the little vehicles to 
pass one another. All is 
in motion. There are 
processions of men in 
office passing continually 
with their numerous re- 
tinues, bearing umbrellas 
and flags, painted lanterns, 
and a variety of strange 
insignia of their owner's 
rank and station ; troops of dromedaries laden with 
coal from Tartary ; wheelbarrows and handcarts stuffed 
with vegetables ; pedlars with their packs ; jugglers, 
conjurors, comedians, fortune-tellers, and mounte- 
banks ; while the buzz and confused noises of this 
mixed multitude is positively deafening. There are 
trains accompanying, with lamentable cries, corpses 
to their graves, and, with equally squalling music, 
wives to their husbands ; there is the 
bawling of those who are crying their 
wares ; the wrang- 
ling of others; with 
every now and 
then a strange 
twanging noise like 
the jarring of a 

271 




<i£ 



World Pictures 




cracked Jew's-harp, — this is the barber's signal made 
by his tweezers ; and the mirth and laughter that pre- 
vails in every group could scarcely be exceeded. This 
strange system of economising space in the roads an- 
swers very admirably ; there are few accidents, both 
pedestrians and equestrians jogging along at what- 
ever pace they choose. I have even seen men stop on 
the pavement to eat a whole square meal from a cook- 
ing apparatus, without causing a serious obstruction. 

The river scenes in China are the most picturesque 
in the world. A capacious volume might be written 
upon this subject alone. In Shanghai harbour there 
are thousands of sampans stretching away literally for 
miles around, and so closely packed together that one 
might go for a six-mile walk on the ocean by stepping 

272 




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.MHl 


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ON THE YELLOW RIVER 



China 

from one to the other. A great proportion of the 
population are born and Hve and die upon their 
sampans ; whole families live, eat, and sleep, huddled 
together, beneath one little bamboo covering all the 
year round, in sun, in rain, in all weathers. Here 
^rnany trades are carried on, such as making baskets 
and lanterns, tearing up weeds that grow beneath the 
water, fishing, and cooking rice ; and the activity 
of these people in their floating homes, whether old 
men or little babies, is quite extraordinary. There 
are boats laden with cargoes of flowers and vegetables ; 
junks of colossal size, carrying monstrous sails tattered 
and patched with gorgeous rags ; cormorant fishing 
boats, and many strange craft of all forms and colours, 
and many of which I do not know the names or 
uses. 




273 



World Pictures 

When one gets out into the real country in China 
it is then beautiful and picturesque as far as one can 
see. Emerald-green rice fields stretch away into the 
distance, intersected and cut up by creeks and canals, 




li^r '■ 




clumps of trees, and bamboo groves, which last, in 
my opinion, form the most beautiful and impressive 
sights imaginable. The land is well cultivated, and 
everywhere there are well-kept farms, and villages 
of queer thatched houses, just such as one might see 
in any little English hamlet. China is dotted all over 
with graveyards. The country is full of them, and the 
graves vary greatly in shape ; some are mere mounds 
of earth, others are like miniature houses ; some are 

274 



China 




covered over with thatched straw, while 
those of the mandarins take up almost 
a mile of ground and are possessed of 
wide avenues of trees, flights of marble 
steps, stone statues, and a great deal of 
rich carving. Nearly all the streets in 
China are mostly composed of undertakers' shops or 
butchers' shops, the former displaying in their windows 
magnificent funeral biers, mingled with equally gor- 
geous marriage cars. 

The joss houses are the most curious places of all. 
Both people and priests alike seem to treat their 
religion as one huge joke, and outwardly, at any rate, 
appear to have no respect for the person of the sacred 
Buddha whatever ; they throw paper pellets at him, 
and spend their time turning the handle of a machine 
that rolls off mechanically so many score of prayers 
a minute. The priests, in their yellow robes, circle 
round and round the altar like half a dozen donkeys 
pacing round a water-mill, and with about as much 
intelligence. After having completed a certain num- 
ber of these rotations, and when the 
beads on their chaplets have all been 
counted, they elaborately chalk up a 
mark, registering in this manner the 
number of their ejaculations to Fo. 
The Chinese have a settled conviction 
that three spirits inhabit their bodies : 
one that travels topside with them 
when they die, one that lives in their 

275 




World Pictures 




grave, and one that in- 
habits the tablet that 
they keep at home to be 
reverenced. But the 
one great and all-prevail- 
ing idea of the Chinese 
religious enthusiast is to 
try to the best of his 
ability to avoid trouble 
here on earth, and to 
make sure of a more 
or less good time here- 
after. 
Turning to another subject, I may say that a 

Chinese dinner, contrary to one's already preconceived 

ideas of that meal, is very 

pleasant indeed to the West- 
ern palate. To be sure, now 

and again when your host 

desires to do you especial 

honour, he will have served a 

nest of warm new-born mice; 

but that, happily for the 

Englishman, is only on rare 

occasions. Ordinarily Chinese 

dishes are excellent, neatly 

dressed, and served in dainty 

porcelain bowls. The pastry 

for lightness and snowiness 

might challenge the world, 

276 





„"?rT-rS 




A RIVER SCENE, CHINA 



Chi 



ina 




France not excepted ; the soups with their savouring 
of soy and other ingredients are dehghtful, and the 
vermicelli, of course, is above reproach. The luxury 
of ice is, in the larger Chinese cities, within the reach 

of the poorest peasant, and all 
fruits are cooled upon it. A 
criterion may be formed of 
the state of mind in which a 
Chinaman happens to be by 
the number and quantity of 
the dishes at table. 

Night in China, with its 
deep blues and orange light, 
appeals to me more than any 
hour of the day. On the 
night of the famous feast of 
lanterns the whole empire is 
lighted up from one extremity 
to the other in every possible 
277 




World Pictures 

way that fancy can suggest, and the people exercise 
their ingenuity by making transparencies in the shape 
of different animals, — birds, beasts, and fishes, — with 
which they run up and down the streets by night, 
accompanied by squibs, squalling music, sky rockets, 







coloured fire, and what not ; the effect is whimsical 
enough. On this night the cities are cities of lanterns, 
the roads and roofs and houses being strung with 
them. There are lanterns in the shape of weird beasts 
such as have never been seen on the earth, carried 
about on poles, and there are processions of lanterns 
which are truly beautiful, for the tawdry side is lost in 
the gloom, and only the fantastic shapes loom ghost- 
like and golden against the purple night. 

278 



CHINESE COOK 



JAPAN 



■-Vi',y- 



^4-^^« 







( 



AT KIOTO 




JAPAN 

Japan is the land of flowers ; so the travellers have 
told us. We see in the picture books that they bring 
back with them strange, and to our minds distorted, 
pictures of flowers arranged in vases, of gardens with 
miniature pine trees curved and twisted into decorative 
patterns. Everything in these picture books is queer, 
exaggerated, impossible. Why, even the babies' heads 
are represented as being carved with designs, quaint 
little knobs of jet-black hair being left isolated on di- 
minutive white pates. Caricatures ! ridiculous ! we 
remark. Not at all. The picture book baby is an exact 
portrait of the living, breathing, Japanese child. The 
picture book gardens, the picture book houses, are 
exact representations of gardens and houses, as one 
sees them blooming and standing in the streets and 
open places of Japan. How true they are one does 
not realise until actually visiting the country. 

283 



World Pictures 




A flower-land Japan is said 
to be, and a flower-land it is 
in very truth. From Haru 
(that is, springtime, February) 
round to Haru again, flower 
fetes and flower festivals are a 
part of the little Jap's life. 
Almost every month is known 
by its special blossom. We 
have our groves of oaks or 
elms or chestnuts. They have 
their avenues of flower-bearing 
trees. In February, the eldest 
brother of a hundred flowers, the weirdly formed plum 
tree, is in bloom. It is at that time leafless. It 
keeps in flower for four weeks, and it is not a little 
group of trees that you find, but an avenue a mile 
long, sometimes two miles or even longer. April is 
the month of the cherry tree. The blossom does not 
cling so long as the plum ; the wind scatters it more 
quickly. Here we grow the single flower for fruit. 
In Japan the tree is grown for the delight of the eye ; 
so the double bloom is seen most often. White with 
a tinge of green is the rarer bloom ; but there are 
great sheets of the pale pink blossoms. The cherry 
is hardly turning into fruit before you have the wistaria 
in flower, great screens of purple, the flowers hanging 
in deep fringes that are undreamt of with us. The 
bluebell is not a stranger at this time, nor the azalea. 
Then in June the irises come — a wonderland in them- 

284 









ss. 



w 




f 



AN IRIS GARDEN, JAPAN 



Jap 



an 




selves. They line the million 
tiny streams in the gardens. 
They form a flower-bed along 
the sides of the rivers — a car- 
pet of jewels, of white, purple, 
and gold. It would be au- 
dacity to attempt to describe 
the eflfect. The word " mag- 
nificent " but poorly conveys 
the idea. With the iris come 
the peony and lotus flower. 
The peony is a great flower, sometimes as big as a 
football ; some of the blooms measure a foot across. 
The hydrangea and the sunflower are companions at 
this time ; the carnation is also a favourite flower, and 
is seen in great variety. In early autumn the chry- 
santhemum puts in an appearance. In Japan it is a 
giant among its fellows, a multitude in itself. I cannot 
tell you the number of varieties, they seem to be infinite ; 
the greatest number are white, then comes yellow. 

I brought some flowers 
^^(=5*^1^^"% home with me one day; it 
"^SZKt^xi- ^^^ ^^ sprmgtime m 

sY^/r^ Tokio, and the flower was 
cherry blossom. 1 arranged 
them in a pot, in a bunch 
as I always used to do at 
home, and stood a few paces 
oflf to view them. What 
was the matter ? The flow- 
285 




World Pictures 




ers looked ugly and wrong. Over and over again I 
tried, but still with the same result. Then I made 
up my mind I would go to a Japanese professor in 
the art of flower arrangement and learn from him. I 
found then how much there was to learn. First of 
all, I discovered a fact of which I am sure nearly every 
one is ignorant ; namely, that the arrangement of flow- 
ers in Japan has for centuries been regarded as a fine 
art, — an art the property of the learned men, and the 
men of letters, and the ladies of the aristocracy. 

Tradition governs all things. As in the garden, 
so in the arrangement of a bouquet, nature is de- 
ceived by art. Bouquets are arranged on a system. 
There are the three, five, and seven line arrangements, 
and so on. In composing a bouquet the Japanese 

286 



Japan 




would shudder at our cabbage-like mingling of flow- 
ers. He takes two, or sometimes three, kinds of 
flowers, perhaps with foliage, and artificially trims both 
flowers and foliage, forcing twig, leaf, and flower into 
the strange shape which fashion has taught him they 
should assume. In spring the bouquet is designed 
to look strong and sturdy to express growth ; in 
summer, it is full and spreading to indicate luxury ; 
in autumn, spare and lean to show that summer has 
gone. 

To please his guest is the one idea a Japanese 
host has. And one side — or rather a recess in the 
side of the room — is where he lays himself out to 
pay his compliments. He hangs on his wall a kake- 
mono, and in front of this is usually placed a vase 

287 



World Pictures 




before a guest. 



or a pot of flowers. 
By means of their ar- 
rangement he wishes 
you joy, health, 
riches, long life, a 
pretty wife, or some 
other good wish. 
Flowers with a strong 
odor are considered 
unsuitable for placing 
There is no plant, flower, or tree, as 
I have said, but has a lucky or unlucky omen cling- 
ing to it. 

Quaintly the Jap separates nature up into sexes. 
You have male and female flowers. The male is always 
the more vigorous, the female the simpler. In Flower- 
land the buds are female, the flowers male. Red, 
purple, and pink are male colours ; blue, yellow, and 
white, female. The front surface of the leaf male, the 
under surface female. White is the colour most loved, 
yellow comes next. To be an expert in either flower 
arrangement or gardening calls for a long apprentice- 
ship. The gardener ranks with 
the poet and the artist. Often 
he is not a workman's son, but 
belongs to a family of the higher 
grade. In the land of the 
Rising Sun the learned men, the 
poets, and the painters are nearly 
all students of Flower-land. It 




ENTRANCE TO A T E M P L E 



Japan 

is a part of their education — more than that, a part 
of their life — to be versed in the anatomy and prop- 
erties of every flower of the field. 

To a Japanese a garden is his paradise. There, that 
which otherwise is silent has a language. All things 




speak. In the gardens, not a flower is born to blush 
unseen ; not a flower grows but has a meaning at- 
tached to it. It is of either good or evil omen. We 
know that you cannot paint a lily, or gild a rose, but 
the Japanese come very near to doing this. The plan- 
ning and designing of a garden in Japan is a subtle 
craft — more subtle, I would say, than the work of a 
jewel setter. 

Flowers are worshipped in Japan ; they are a part 

280 



World Pictures 



of the people's lives. The peasant is poor, but if 
he can he will have what is equivalent to our poor 
folks' window-garden, his pots of flowers. The 
merchant has his villa garden. This, in reality, may 




wMm 



not be more than fifty or sixty yards square ; but, 
by an ingenious arrangement, it is made to appear as 
endless as the prospect you get in a fairy scene on the 
stage. Design outwits nature. A lyric becomes a 
highly polished sonnet. How is this brought about ? 
Why, the Japanese gardener is an artist. Like the 
great painters of all times, he draws directly on nature 
for his material. The impossible does not exist, or 
barely, in the mind of a Japanese gardener. He looks 
on his native land as a picture. And after due con- 
templation, he is prepared to reproduce in miniature the 
main features of " the land of a thousand islands " as 
a whole, or in part, in the form of a landscape garden. 

290 



Japan 

The garden is planned on a Lilliputian method. All 
is arranged to scale. You view nature with an eye no 
bigger than that of a tiny Japanese doll. You know 
what a raised or modelled bird's-eye view map of the 
physical geography of a district looks like. Well, 




apply a very powerful magnifying glass to it and you 
have the idea. 

The Japanese gardener works only after study and 
contemplation. Say he has a garden to design. His 
patron has visited or heard of some beautiful spot. 
Having heard or suggested what is wanted, the gar- 
dener-artist hies him away to the spot, and then begins 
to make studies. One by one, he seeks out the notable 
views of the place, and makes notes of them ; then con- 
templates, first the individual views, and then the whole 
scene collectively ; and ends by being prepared to build 
up a doll's garden scene of what he has been studying. 

2gi 



World Pictures 




A bank so many feet high would represent a mountain ; 
a tiny stream, a river ; a group of a few trees, a forest. 
Then, miniature pagodas, temples, and shrines, all built 
to scale so as to fit together uniformly as a whole, add 
to the illusion. Half closing your eyes, you may 
dream that you are in a garden of royal proportions, 
when it is only what we should describe here, in our 
more prosaic way, as " a nice piece of ground attached 
to the house." 

To be plain, a Japanese garden is a bird's-eye view, 
a poetical conception in which are embodied the most 
striking features of the landscape of the country : arti- 
ficial lakes, torrent beds, a miniature living picture of 
some more spacious landscape. The gardener-artist 
works more correctly than the camera. He is warned 
not to follow too closely in his work the real details, but 
to look on the whole scene and then produce the effects. 
His perspective is perfect ; his illusions, as I have said, 
are those of a scenic artist. Throughout the design 
there is no one spot on which the eye is allowed to 

292 



GEISHA GIRLS, JAPAN. 



Japan 

rest ; he gains immensely by his use of variety. Yet 
the illusion may be roughly dispelled. I saw a dog, an 
ordinary sized animal, walk over one of the tiny bridges. 
He appeared a Gulliver among the Lilliputians. 

Supreme importance is paid to the smallest trifles. 
Even a door must not have more head nails visible in 
it than custom prescribes. Trees (there are but few 
big ones) and stones play a large part in the display 
of a Japanese garden. Each stone is measured, and 
its place is allotted with all the etiquette of the law of 
the Medes and Persians that altereth not. Trees, too, 
are arranged. For example, there is the tree of solitude, 
the tree of the sinking sun. Then there is the waiting 
stone, the perfect view stone, the guardian stone, the 
worshipping stone, and the stone of two gods. In this 
way, the garden is a kind of Walhalla. The idea is 
full of romance, full of beauty. 




lit' " " 7^^, ' ~' I 



^33\ 



293 



World Pictures 




So much for Japanese Flower-land. Although my 
space is limited, I am tempted to wander there all 
day. But is Japan merely a land of flowers ? Has 
it no other beauties to reveal, no other joys ? What 
of the geishas, the children, the workers, the living 
art of the country, the painters and their methods, 
the science of placing, the characteristics of the people, 
the drama ? On each and every one of these subjects 
a volume might be written, and much be still left 
unsaid. There is the geisha — the educated woman 
of Japan, the entertainer, the hostess, the charmer. 
She is the life and soul of every tea-house and feast ; 
always gay, always laughing, always young, she forms 
the merry, sparkling side of Japanese life. When- 
ever one dines out or is entertained, a geisha forms 
the principal part of the entertainment. She herself 

294 



Japan 

decorates the room where you are dining as would 
a gorgeous tropical flower, a fascinating exotic figure, 
a bewildering symphony in vermilion, orange, and 
gold. Oh, the witchery of the geishas, flirting with 
their fans, with the sweetest little shoes, and the 
daintiest httle feet, and the darkest little eyes and 
wisps of hair in the world ! Miss Pomegranate, 
Miss Butterfly, Lady Lavender, and Lady Helio- 
trope, all are equally entrancing. 

How delightful it is to travel in Japan : to feast 
one's eyes on the gorgeous sweet-stalls and the tea- 
houses, the theatre exteriors so characteristic of the 
country, the fairs and markets, the small children 
blowing soap bubbles through straight straws, the 
booths shaded with multi-coloured umbrellas, the 
brilliantly coloured crimson lanterns, the quiet canals, 
and the curtained entrances to the shops ; the demure 
children of the streets with their short-cropped heads 
and audacious faces, and their bamboo trumpets ; 
the golden dragon screens, displayed 
for sale in the shops ; the dye-works 
of Osaka, with the strips of blue 
fabric hanging up to dry ; or the 
fair at Kioto, where behind the um- 
brella-shaded stalls you see the 
great stone lamps with which the 
Japanese cities are lighted. 

The life of the Japanese streets 
is singularly dainty. There is a fra- 
gility and ricketiness about all the 

295 




World Pictures 




things made by these little peo- 
ple, beside which our solid con- 
structions, our iron, and clamps, 
and blocks, and girders, are 
like matters of another planet. 
Their shaky but dainty houses, 
umbrellas, cabinets, decora- 
tions, were made for gentle 
hands that will not break them, 
\ and beside the light touch of 
which our grasp looks brutal. 
Everything is small, and slow, 
and careful. When the Japanese makes his little fire, 
he lays on fuel fit for a doll, with little chop-sticks 
smaller than the tongs that lift the sugar into our 
cups. Things need not be very strong for people of 
such a gentle attitude, and this slenderness is charm- 
ingly rendered in the street scenes with the slight 

houses, the great rows of paper , - - - 

lanterns, the open shops, the 
gay and orderly play of the 
children about the sweet-meat 
stalls. A very great proportion 
of the surfaces presented to the 
eye are of paper, a fact which 
in itself suggests this Japanese 
slightness most expressively. I' |[ 

I was attracted in Japan by ^_ 
the shops rather than the tem- 
pies, by the lanterns and stream- 

296 



r-jjfV" <" ■> . 



l^ J' 









v 






__imSM 



t&:z' 



cy.- 



"1 ^i^ 



CHILDREN WATCHING A PLAY 



Japan 

ers rather than the trees, by the dancing girls and the 
children rather than their fathers and mothers. I 
loved the butterfly beauty of the festal costumes and 
umbrellas, and the gorgeous hues of the lanterns ; the 
babies with their true baby looks of wonder ; the 
larger children blowing bubbles or intent on sweets ; 
and the Japanese boys, philosophers every one of 
them, reading the Yokohama " Star," as they ran 
through the streets, or gathering, round-eyed and 
solemn, round a theatrical playbill. You may see a 
small Japanese maiden with another not much smaller 
than herself on her back, dainty and delightful as 
only a Japanese child can be. 

The Japanese "bobby" is a dear little fellow — so 
tiny, so pretty, and so charmingly dressed that you 
feel inclined to embrace him. He is greatly respected, 
and I was given to understand is of noble family. 
Although you would have to roll about twelve 
together to make an average Lon- 
don " bobby," law and order are 
admirably preserved, and there are 
no unpleasant police scandals, no 
blackmailers, and no brutality. They 
were so polite to me that they used 
to put a model in position and keep 
him there until I had done with 
him. They have tremendous power, 
and whenever a fire takes place all 
that the policemen have to do is 
to encircle the burning building with 

297 



/<^i^ 




World Pictures 




ways die early. 



a piece of twine, a device which is 
quite sufficient to keep the crowd 
back. When a policeman arrests a 
prisoner he ties a bit of string round 
his arm, and he never thinks of 
breaking away. 

One travels from place to place in 
rickshaws. My men sometimes car- 
ried me as far as thirty miles a day 
in return for a couple of shillings. 
The rickshaw men, by the way, al- 
They run themselves out, and fre- 
quently drop down dead in the shafts. They are 
tremendous " swells," and for dignity I should com- 
pare a rickshaw man with a member of our House of 
Lords. 

The Mikado's garden is a lovely retreat, with ver- 
dant trees and shaded walks, cooled by splashing foun- 
tains, warmed by the glowing tropical sun, which 
shoots its brilliant rays through the leafage, and casts 
a thousand fleeting shadows on the lively scene below. 
The lines of lanterns sway in the 
soft wind, the band plays w^altzes, 

— none of your tum-tum music, 

— the Japanese Irving struts on 
the improvised stage ; there are old- 
fashioned dances, and the ladies of 
the ballet, who have not yet taken 
to tights, relieve the tedium of the 
tragedian. It was a delightful after- 

298 















»; i I 



A TEA IIOUSK, JAPAN 



Japan 

noon I spent there, and full of curious experiences. 
The Mikado wore a tall hat. Yes, a tall hat, a frock 
coat, and patent leather boots on his feet. The court 
had had general orders to appear in the latest Parisian 
styles, so instead of the ladies tripping it like Yum 
Yum and the " three little maids from school " in 
Japanese, they wore toques and Worth " creations." 

The dramatic author in Japan holds a very different 
position to that which is his here. He is not only the 
arbiter in literary matters, but he handles the whole 
technique of the production as regards scenery, dresses, 
and general mounting. There, no actor or actress 
with a fad would get a hearing, nor would one think 
of questioning the author's arrangements. Besides, 
there they indulge in no ridiculous attempts at realism. 
They don't try to deceive you with make-believe 
moons, and suns, and waves, grabbing at nature, as we 




299 



World Pictures 




do here, thinking that we are producing art. If a man 
has to die on the stage, he breathes his last in a proper, 
orthodox sort of way. and then quietly gets up and 
walks off; or, supposing an actor comes on whose dra- 
peries require arranging, in that case some little black 
boys proceed to do what is necessary ; the audience 
making it a point of honour not to see them ; in fact, 
they are so used to this sort of thing that really I don't 
think they do see them. There, Art is the suggestion 
of Nature in colour, in tone, and appropriate patterns, 
while the limit of the picture is not confined to the 
space formed by the proscenium, the decoration being 
carried from the stage into the theatre, the very actors 
often passing through the audience from their dressing- 
rooms. 

Another difference is the use of a rotary stage, so 
that the next scene can be arranged whilst one is being 

300 



Jap 



an 

presented to the audience. All the people in the pit 
and gallery sit on the floor; and as refreshments are 
constantly needed (the play lasting some time), every 
one regales himself, some of the people, the poorer 
ones, bringing in their little trays of comestibles, while 
the wealthier purchase them at the counters in the 
theatre, and proceed to warm the contents on the char- 
coal stoves. 

Their most eminent actor is Danjuro, a thorough 
artist and a most capable draftsman. He is universally 
admired, and an immense favourite everywhere, but he 
holds a very small place in society, in spite of the Eng- 
lish residents having done much to better the general 
position of the dramatic profession. In fact, the Japan- 
ese regard the actor as a somewhat effeminate person, a 
mere strutter on the stage, and persons of rank would 
never dream of entertaining him in any social way ; 
even the middle class would think twice before classing 
an actor among their friends. He would come more 
under the denomination of " acquaintance." Danjuro 
plays parts of every 
kind ; and though he is 
sixty years of age, I have 
seen him play a young 
girl of eighteen so as to 
deceive the Japanese 
themselves. I remem- 
ber on one occasion a 
whole row of nurses 
taking him for a woman 

30 J 




World Pictures 




for a long time, until he made some little slip in 
manner or deportment which revealed the deception. 
You may be surprised that he should be playing a 
female part, but in Japan the sexes are not mixed in 
the companies. At some theatres the company Is en- 
tirely composed of men, while at others — generally 
of an inferior class — only women are engaged. As a 

matter of fact, I think I 

may say that there is not 
a thoroughly good actress 
in the whole of Japan. 
The plays themselves may 
generally be classed under 
the head of dramas and 
melodramas. 

I was surprised at the 
attention paid to rehears- 
ing. All the players seemed 
302 




fa^r:' '■ 



1 




^ 



i 



THE OGARA RIVER AT TOKIO 



Japan 

to be fairly letter-perfect. The costumes are most 
gorgeous, and the classical plays are of the most 
elaborate character, the correctness in detail often 
being due to having been copied from old drawings 
and original paintings. 




In describing Japan one should not be content with 
depicting the ordinary everyday tourist aspect of 
Japanese life which every one is getting a little tired 
of, just as they are becoming weary of the third-rate 
Japanese curios, fabrics, and pictures with which Eng- 
land has been deluged within recent years. One should 
wander in the less frequented tracts, explore picturesque 
, corners, go behind the scenes, and study the life and 
character of the people, become familiar with their 

303 



World Pictures 

country, and master the peculiarities of their race. 
There is inevitably a kind of indulgence in the West- 
ern treatment of Japanese character, a confession of 
the grotesque, mingled with the respect due to Japan- 
ese dehcacy and fastidiousness. An Englishman in 
Japan must have an uneasy consciousness of the dec- 
orations he has left behind him — of the vulgarisms 
of the European world, of its wholesale trimming and 
its shouldering manners ; and yet he must needs feel 
that Greece and Rome are in the ancestry of this dull 
and rough world, and are absent from the ancestry of 
that gentle and exquisite world of the extreme East, 
and that Japanese gentleness, humbleness, instinct, 
and art are to us alien from the beginning. 




304 



Japan 



^^ 



\ \^ i '' 



I 



T ' 1 



>'--:M 



^a 



To a stranger there is an absence of expression, an 
inscrutability about the face of a Japanese. Ignorance 
of the language can be but little in comparison with 
ignorance of the eyes, and the eyes of the Japanese 
keep secret even the suggestion that there is anything 
to hide. They make denials of all mystery. The 
whole broad face utters a foreign language, but so 
habitually do we look for communication from the eyes 
that Japanese eyes seem to us to refuse all utterance 
whatever. But, after all, it must be to the works of the 
Japanese man — his art, his illumination, his garden, 
his selection, the fewness and the charm of his adorn- 
ments of labour and life, his delicate buildings, his 
planted flowers — to these and not to his own mo- 

305 



World Pictures 

notonous little form and his unclassical presence that 
we must look. 

A gentle rosy lantern, a luminous white iris, and a 
purple and twilight moon, — such things make the 
touching beauty of this ultimate East, where the tem- 
perate climate is unsmirched, the earth sweetly culti- 
vated, the mountain-forms strange, and the sky that 
of the ocean-side of the globe. 




306 



MEXICO 




MEXICO CITY, MEXICO 




MEXICO 



I JOURNEYED to Mcxico in an Indian Pacific cargo 
boat, which landed me at Tampico in the Gulf of 
Mexico, whence I began the usual beaten tourist track 
round Guadalquava, Puebla, the capital, and so on. 
The traveller who goes to the city of Mexico ex- 
pecting to find local colour will be disappointed. 
Capitals of all countries have cosmopolitan points in 
common, and one must go further afield to get at the 
real traits and manners that are the inner characteris- 
tics of a nation. I might have been going round that 
circular tour still if a good man called Clegg, manager 
of the Inter-Oceanic Railway, had not put me up to 
the peculiar virtues of Tehuantepec as a place to stop 
at. The actual travelling to Tehuantepec was rather 
curious. The line was a new one, badly laid, and 
stoppages had occasionally to be made in order to cut 
wood for the engine. Whenever we came to a bridge 

309 



World Pictures 

a man had to walk over first to see that it was safe. 
Then the train walked over ; and then I walked over, 
for I judged it might be safer if the train and I did 
not walk over together. Tehuantepec is the centre 
of the Zapateco race, and I should not like to say how 










old that race is. They were never conquered even by 
the Aztecs, but used to flee up to a stronghold called 
Gine-ugula, on the top of a mountain, whence nothing 
but a machine gun could fetch them. I paid a visit 
to Gine-ugula. We ate parrots on the way, and got 
the most magnificent views it is possible to im.agine, 
right away to the coast of the Pacific. But it was a 
tremendous climb. 

I had a servant called Antonio, the most useless of 
servitors, but paintable at every moment of his exist- 

310 



Mexico 

ence from the picturesque point of view. Antonio 
was most interested in my work, even to the extent 
of choosing subjects for my pictures. He hailed from 
the lowlands, and on that memorable journey to Gine- 
ugula up the mountains made sufficient ludicrous mis- 




takes to fill a stout volume. Full of energy to start 
with, he collected together all the bedding and bag- 
gage belonging to myself and other travellers, and so 
surrounded himself with packages as to be indistin- 
guishable at twenty paces; but within half an hour 
he cheerfully dropped the impeding bags or rugs along 
the road, and turned up practically luggageless, while 
search parties had to set out in all directions to pick 
up what he had dropped. After resting for an hour 
he began to collect wood for my camp fire. He 

3" 



World Pictures 




started on a sapling, which immediately gave way and 
landed him in the embrace of a peculiarly prickly 
form of cactus called the " Devil's Needle." That 
night he distinguished himself again by fixing my 
hammock to an outhouse only slightly built and used 
as a chicken roost ; consequently, directly I got in, the 
whole concern came down with a crash and damaged 
six chickens. Quite unabashed, Antonio fixed me up 
again and went off to mind the camp fire, which pres- 
ently, forgetful of my presence overhead, he nursed up 
nearer and nearer, until at last the flames crackled 
briskly directly beneath my hammock. My pain and 
fear were mingled in one mighty howl, as I leapt out 
with all the agility of a practised athlete. Antonio 
expressed genuine sorrow at my discomfiture, and pro- 
ceeded to unsling my hammock from the friendly trees, 

312 



Mexico 

one of which he discovered, to his horror, was literally- 
composed of myriads of nests of ants. The poor 
blunderer was frightfully bitten. I have painted 
Antonio in all attitudes and disguises, for though he 
would n't work, he served admirably for a model. It 
meant sitting still and doing nothing, which well suited 
the lazy beggar, who was really quite the " comic 
relief" of my time at Tehuantepec. 

What a country and what a people ! Despite all my 
efforts, my pictures were pale in comparison with the 
rich splendour of the land and the gorgeous beauty of 
the race. The women are marvellously beautiful, with 
a classical grace of carriage and firmness of figure that 
come through the habit — centuries old — of carry- 



^-:J 











m'-' 






ir^: 



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Z^l 



World Pictures 

ing weights on the head. To me they suggested 
ancient Egyptians. In every way they are superior 
to the men ; all the marketing and trading are left in 
their hands, while the men devote themselves to tilling 
the ground and drinking " mezcal." They have a 




picturesque sense of colour in clothes ; and one of the 
most interesting sights to be seen is the dyeing of the 
natural material by the seashore. They use the secre- 
tions of a kind of murex, the real old Tyrian dye. It 
is no unusual thing on a fine sunny morning to see 
hundreds of these beautiful women sitting on rocks by 
the sea, squeezing dye from shellfish on to snowy 
skeins of cotton. Instead of killing the shellfish, they 

3H 



Mexico 




■^ ^ 



are careful to put them back again 
into the sea. Cotton dyed in this 
primitive fashion, by the time it 
is woven and shaped into skirts 
and shawls, suggests to one the 
varied tints of an opal. Think 
of a market place in Tehuantepec 
filled with two thousand or more 
of these, the most beautiful women 
in the world, with their superb 
carriage and the dignity of duch- 
esses, with their exquisite figures 
swinging hither and thither in the 

sunshine, and all dressed in Tyrian-dyed skirts and 

chemisettes, for all the world suggestive of a great 

potpourri of rose petals and violets thrown 

silver sand — the sand of the Mexican desert. 

not a man is admitted to spoil 

the harmony, save perhaps an 

artist like myself. That is one 

of the few scenes which will 

remain with me as long as I 

live. It was my first picture 

in Tehuantepec. I will refrain 

from describing these Zapateco 

beauties more minutely, as to 

do so always creates a disturb- 
ance. My audience, more 

especially if of old gentlemen, 

invariably set off in search of 

3^5 



upon 
And 







World Pictures 



,v/r 




atlases that they may find 
out the exact whereabouts 
of Tehuantepec, and even- 
tually make a bee line for 
the place. 

When I arrived at the 
hotel there, I found my- 
self among a lot of amaz- 
ing roughs. Railroad 
men, Americans, the scum 
of the earth, refugees from '^' . ' 

Panama, who had made 

even that ill-reputed locality too hot to hold them, 
dare-devils of every description, murderers, — in brief, 
a gang of utterly hopeless scoundrels. They regarded 
me in the light of a mere wandering artist who could 
do naught else but paint ; and as they were full of 

mezcal — a spirit far stronger 
than brandy — it may be imag- 
ined they were not the most 
reliable companions in a lonely 
place. Each man carried a 
machete at his belt, and the 
ease with which they whipped 
these weapons out was alarming. 
The machete has a blade two 
feet and upwards in length, and 
is the last article of clothing that 
a Mexican would discard. They 
started by " ragging me " rather, 
316 




-^_^-:^\. 



TEHUANTEPEC, MEXICO. 



Mexico 




and "hustling" me about. 
My only way of winning 
them over was to beat them 
at their own game. I have 
shot at Bisley, Wimbledon, 
and the most famous ranges 
in the three kingdoms ; and 
so seizing a revolver, I gave 
them an exhibition of what 
I could do. They were 
won at once, and a very awk- 
ward moment was turned into a veritable hour of tri- 
umph. They respected me accordingly, and became 
my staunch friends. One man offered, as we sat in the 
hall, to tell me the histories of the various men as 
they entered. There was a San Salvador colonel, a 
most satanic-looking gentleman with black mustachios 
and billy-goat beard, who was endeavouring to recruit 
filibusters to reinstate the 
exiled ex-president Ezeta. 
Then there was a charming 
character with a pock- 
marked face and ferocious 
red beard. He was a pirate 
and an opium smuggler, a 
desperate man who con- 
fessed to having killed - 
people by scores. I noticed 
a washed-out, middle-aged 
man, perfectly dressed, but 

317 










World Pictures 

with a shifty expression that would have caused a Scot- 
land Yard detective to turn three somersaults back- 
ward and exclaim, " By heaven ! I am on his track." 
His nose was like the prow of an old war vessel ; 
behind this one could see two slatey eyes and a weak, 
vacillating mouth, closely resembling that of a water 
rat. His left ear was missing, having been chewed 
off in a public bar-room in Puebla by an infuriated 
railway conductor, who would probably have masti- 
cated his whole carcass had he not been unwilling to 
deprive the gallows of a lawful victim, and had there- 
fore allowed him to depart, slightly disfigured, but 
still in the ring. At the time I saw him he was em- 
ployed to pull a bell in a neighbouring church. I 
was advised, if he came near my room, to nail every- 
thing down to the floor. There was also a British 



V 






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j^ 



3f^ 



Mexico 




trooper of the Irish Lancers, 
harmless and amusing, chiefly 
noted as being a gentleman 
oppressed by doing nothing. 
One very gentlemanly-looking 
Mexican, with a kind, good- 
natured countenance, was pointed 
out to me as being the cause of 
between four hundred and five 
hundred deaths. Such were the 
men who were to be my com- 
panions for the next three months 
or so. Of course they were not , 
all so bad as these, and the fine- 
haired villains kept themselves 
apart from the common herd ; but still, I have met 
some curious characters in my time. Some of them 
were very amusing fellows indeed, and I would sit by 
the hour listening to their stories, told in that quaint 
American lingo which at first is almost unintelligible 
to a Britisher. 

The first evening in Tehuantepec, my new friends 
proposed to take me to a cantina or a " mezcal joint," 
where, they said, I should see some pictures of Mexi- 
can home life. Nothing loath, I followed them, 
escorted by a half-crazy policeman as bodyguard. 
He was a plucky little chap, perfectly thorough in all 
he undertook. Eleven years ago he was the only 
man who volunteered to bury the corpses during the 
great cholera epidemic of 1883. Once, during an 
• 319 



World Pictures 

excursion to the cemetery, one of his passengers had 
the impertinence to sit up, and actually attempted to 
get out. The policeman indignantly knocked him over 
the head with his spade; but when they arrived at 
the cemetery, the rebellious corpse absolutely refused 
to be buried and the little fellow lost his temper, and. 




^-ir 



squaring his fists, went for him. If it had not been 
for the timely interference of a passer-by, he would 
have carried the day. 

Accompanied by this energetic man, we arrived at 
our cantina, a little gaudily painted shop, with a great 
gold ball hanging from the door, and a sign written in 
four different languages over it, adorned with pictures 
of tropical scenery painted by a native artist with a 
careless disregard of perspective. The shop was filled 
with half-drunken people, and lighted by a smoking 

320 



Mexico 




lamp and two dripping candles. The walls and 
ceiling were decorated with dried Spanish moss and 
festoons of coloured paper, with depending glass balls. 
Behind the counter were a number of gaily painted 
barrels, containing the various liqueurs. In the centre 
of the room was a large, rickety table, around which 




321 



World Pictures 

the lowest types of men imaginable were seated, drink- 
ing and smoking. They had eight different bottles 
— cognac, mezcal, pulque, chartreuse, and so on. 
Men dressed in cheap straw hats, loose breeches, and 
sandals lounged about, drinking, playing dominoes, 
or grouped themselves about a blind man who was 
playing on a guitar and singing. These songs were 




fine examples of native melody, more or less in a 
minor key, a nasal drawl at the end of each Hne, with 
a rising inflection, giving a peculiarly weird effect. 
Women gorgeously dressed mingled amongst the 
crowd. The atmosphere reeked with smoke and 
odours of stale liqueurs. It was by no means an 
enjoyable place in which to spend an evening, but 
interesting and unusual in the extreme. All kinds 
and types of faces and costumes were crowded in the 
stuffy little room. There were miners dressed in 
their Sunday clothes, in wide sombreros, full blouses 
over wide trousers, bright sashes wound round the 

322 



Mexico 

waist, and shod In sandals or yellow high-heeled 
boots ; farmers in pleated smocks, loosely tied buck- 
skin trousers, made wide and open down the sides, 
with many buttons ; artisans in black felt hats, 
turned-down collars and white shirts, low-necked 
waistcoats, coloured ties, short jackets cut in the Eton 




shape, tight trousers, and high-heeled boots. Heavy 
swells swaggered about in clothes ornamented with silver 
buttons, and carried silver-handled pistols, and chains. 
Carriers and muleteers were to be seen in hats of palm 
leaves, with white duck trousers tucked into high 
yellow leather boots, and a kind of leathern armour 
over all ; they had long whips coiled round the waist, 
with the handles hanging down, and belts full of 
pistols, knives, and cartridges. They were all strong, 
brawny-looking men, these Mexicans, very square- 
shouldered, with fine limbs, faces burnt to a copper 

323 



World Pictures 




brown, bushy eyebrows, 
piercing black eyes, good 
teeth, aquiline noses, and 
oval faces. 

The fact of our not 
being clothed in regula- 
tion white suits caused 
us to be looked upon 
with suspicion, which 
dangerous sentiment we 
hastened to allay by 
purchasing a bottle of 
mezcal and presenting it to the company. As the even- 
ing wore on the crowd became more and more noisy, 
and it was evident to us, the only two sober men in the 
cantina, that a row was breeding. Suddenly there was 
a scuffle and flash of steel. The blind musician 
dropped his guitar, and all pretences with it, and fled 
over the counter. The pro- 
prietor rushed into the night 
howling for the police, while 
women joined in the tumult 
with screams and yells. The 
crowd made precipitous darts 
for the various doors, only to 
be met by the police with rifles, 
who promptly placed the entire 
mob under arrest. The wounds 
of one of the fighters were pro- 
nounced to be not fatal, and he 






'km^P-'} 




324 



1 




A MEXICAN VILLAGE 



Mexico 




was prodded to his feet, 
and placed in a line with 
the other prisoners, and 
the procession wound 
slowly into the dim 
night, leaving the weep- 
ing women behind. The 
proprietor returned and 
calmly threw down a 
shovelful of earth over 
the scene of the disturb- 
ance, made us a low bow, 
and hoped we had not 
been disturbed. I could relate some horribly brutal 
things, seen and heard of in Mexico, sufficient to turn 
your blood cold ; but perhaps they are not much to 

the point. After all, it 
was from an artistic, not 
an ethnological point of 
view that I was chiefly in- 
terested in the country. 

Sunday is the day to 
paint markets and street 
scenes in Tehuantepec. 
The trees in the public 
square bloom with oranges 
and mangoes. Clustered 
round and about the church 
are scores of dark-skinned 
market women, sitting 




325 



World Pictures 

around on palm mats, stout, good humoured dames 
with gaily plaited black hair, low chemises, necklaces 
of gaudy beads, huge crescent-shaped earrings, and 
shawls of native manufacture wound round their 
heads. A piece of canvas held by a bamboo frame 












n 




shields both the woman and her wares — oranges, 
bananas, and tropical fruit and vegetables of all kinds 
— from the rays of the sun. Seiioras, dressed in ex- 
cessively starched print dresses, clean and white, reach- 
ing to the ankles so as to show two high-heeled, 
pointed-toed boots and white stockings, move amongst 
the crowd, market basket on one arm, prayer-book 
and rosary on the other. Two long plaits of black 
hair, tied at the ends with coloured ribbon, hang 
down to the waist. A servant walks behind, dressed 
in a white shirt, tucked into broad pyjama trousers ; 
round his waist is the usual scarf, and a palm 
leaf hat is on his head. He is generally a good- 

326 



Mexico 

humoured, grinning lad. A round-faced, kindly priest 
moves among the crowd, talking to the vendors, 
and collecting from their hands many an offering of 
fruit and vegetables. He is dressed in a shiny top 




hat, long black coat and trousers, and carries a large 
green umbrella. 

At twelve o'clock one goes in search of a twelve-cent 
dinner at some cheap open-air shop. Such an one is 
not difficult to find, and one sits down at almost the 
first deal table one comes across. A stout, good- 
humoured old lady, adorned with glass bead jewelry, 
generally attends one, assisted by her daughter, often 

327 



World Pictures 




a nice-looking girl, who has clear 
olive skin, bright eyes, good teeth, 
a large mouth, and is very viva- 
cious. She brings you an earthen- 
ware brazier filled with charcoal. 
On this is a huge ollar, or pot 
of earthenware, containing the na- 
tional dish of mole, — a sort of 
curry, generally turkey, — which 
is retailed in small earthenware 
dishes at six cents a portion. 
Besides this, there is a large pile 
of tortillas, or maize cakes, and 
a pot of pulque made from the fermented juice of 
the aloe ; all for twelve cents. 

In the evening, I invariably made my way back 
again to the market place. I might have been said to 
have indeed haunted that quaint old market place in 
Tehuantepec at one period of my visit. Those mar- 
vellous dresses worn by the native women, as they 
squatted about amongst heaps of gorgeously hued fruit 
and vegetables, made a scheme of colour which was no 
less fascinating to me in the evening by the flickering 
light of an occasional lamp or candle than it was in the 
glory of midday and mellow sunshine ; in the groups 
of olive-complexioned natives in the varied employ- 
ment of their city Hfe, strongest orange reds, and 
apple greens, and lurid yellows, lit everywhere by an 
intense light as from a furnace, by which the colours 
of petticoat and cloak and tawny flesh are again and 

328 



Mexico 



again reinforced and blended into a strange harmony. 
Still, the effect is undeniably striking, and the luminous 
gloom of the backgrounds reminds one continually of 
Rembrandt, although the soft, brown, golden atmos- 
phere of the great Dutchman is here replaced by a 
lurid furnace glow. 

I stayed in Mexico about six months — long enough 
to observe many national customs. The house of the 
Mexican peasant compares favourably in some ways 
with our dwellings for the poor. It consists of four 
forked uprights, supporting longitudinal beams, which 
form a foundation for the roof of palm leaves. The 
walls are made of cane piles, driven into the ground as 
close together as possible. To these are applied three 
or four inches of mud inside and outside, which, when 
dry, is decorated with a coat of whitewash. These 
" adobe " domiciles are built in a day. Any one in 
Tehuantepec, provided he belongs to a parish, has a 
right to erect a house anywhere within 
its boundaries. After having col- 
lected sufficient materials for the pur- 
pose, he invites his friends to come 
and help him to build. They are 
regaled with mezcal and " tomales " 
during the process, and by the united 
efforts of the party the house is com- 
pleted before sundown. 

The main fact of social life seems 
to be the importance of being a 
godfather. Parental influence is all 

329 




World Pictures 

very well but the vicarious power of the sponsor is so 
great that nothing can be done without his consent. 
If you ask a father to allow you to marry his daughter, 
he in his turn is obliged to obtain the consent of the god- 
father or godmother. There are also financial respon- 
sibilities, but the post is one of great honour, and 
gladly accepted by every one. All ceremonies are an 
excuse for promiscuous drinking. The popular bever- 




^ = 



age, mezcal, is a concoction of the Mexican aloe. But 
the strongest beverage in the country is called " Cat- 
alan," which must not be confounded with the Catalan 
of Spain. This spirit is prepared from sugar cane, and 
is distilled and redistilled until it is almost pure alcohol 
— seventy-five per cent at least. There is also a milder 
form of spirit which is known as " aguardiente." Mez- 
cal has a curiously sedative effect : everything becomes 
couleur de rose^ and if you were to see a man mur- 
dered while under its influence, you would look on with 
an amused and tolerant smile. Births and marriages 

330 



PUEBLA, MEXICO 



Mexico 

are occasions for long debauches. On November i of 
each year, the Mexicans and Indians lay out spirits upon 
a table, and open the doors and windows in case the dead 
should be disposed to quench their thirst. Needless 
to say, the dead refrain, whereupon the relatives assem- 
ble on the following night, and have a glorious time. 

The greatest entertainment is the annual fair, called 
"Vela," which lasts for several days. It consists of 
fireworks, processions, — formerly interspersed with 
Pagan ceremonies, but now concluded by the Mass, 
— and dancing, which is a strange medley of native 
dances and European measures. The women dance, as 
they do everything else, with a wonderful unstudied grace 
and dignity. There is a procession called the "Con- 
vilo de Flores " which is very beautiful. Hundreds 
of ox-carts are adorned with sugar cane and whole 
plants of bananas, and the oxen decorated with flowers. 
The most important men of every parish follow, each 
carrying a large wax candle, decorated with ribbons and 
flowers, and weighing generally from twenty to twenty- 
five pounds. Then come the musicians, as many bands 
massed together as the parish can afford, followed by 
beautiful girls of the poorer class, dressed in the na- 
tive costume, generally red or indigo blue. Towards 
the end of the procession come the daughters of the 
richer families, dressed in heavily starched cotton skirts 
over three or four starched petticoats, which produce the 
effect of crinolines. All the girls carry painted gourds 
filled with rose petals, which, when they meet, they 
throw at one another. Boys and men let off rockets 

33^ 



World Pictures 

at street corners and generally make as much noise as 
possible. Then the flowers are deposited on the floor 
of the church. The next evening there is a grand ball, 
to which every one but drunken men are admitted. 
Any woman or man invited is compelled to dance. 
The ball lasts until daybreak. The revels are kept up 
all the next day, after which for a week every one in 
Tehuantepec, man, woman, and child, is more or less 
laid up. 



332 



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Library of Congress 
Branch Bindery, 1903 



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